She is killed off-stage, one of several significant offstage murders in the play. She heeds his words and exits the scene screaming, “Murder!”. The son is killed first and he urges his mother to flee. Lady Macduff is alarmed and moments later, the scene is invaded by a group of murderers sent by Macbeth. This domesticity is interrupted by the arrival of a messenger who warns her of imminent danger and urges her to escape with her children. Lady Macduff is left with her son, whom she speaks with, her fury toward Macduff mingling with her affection for her child. Claiming to be overcome with emotion, Ross takes his leave. Ross attempts to comfort her, though he offers little consolation and Lady Macduff responds with sharp retorts that betray her anger toward her husband. She is furious at her husband for his desertion of his family. In Act IV Scene II, Lady Macduff appears alongside the thane of Ross and her unnamed son. The latter part of Act IV Scene III is “wholly of Shakespeare’s invention.” Role Holinshed's Chronicles was Shakespeare's main source for Macbeth, though he diverged from the Chronicles significantly by delaying Macduff's knowledge of his wife's murder until his arrival in England. Macduff and Lady Macduff appear in both Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles (1577) and Hector Boece's Scotorum Historiæ (1526). Later playwrights, William Davenant especially, expanded her role in adaptation and in performance. Though Lady Macduff's appearance is limited to this scene, her role in the play is quite significant. Her appearance in the play is brief: she and her son are introduced in Act IV Scene II, a climactic scene that ends with both of them being murdered on Macbeth's orders. She is married to Lord Macduff, the Thane of Fife. Lady Macduff is a character in William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Speaking cools the heat of my willingness to act.Peggy Webber (right) as Lady Macduff in Orson Welles' film adaptation Macbeth (1948 film) While I talk here about the plan, Duncan lives. I fear the stones will echo and reveal where I am, breaking the awful silence that suits what I’m about to do so well. You firm, hard earth: don’t listen to my steps or their direction. Meanwhile old man Murder-having been awakened by the howls of his wolf-walks like a ghost, like that ancient Roman rapist Tarquin, to do the deed. Witches offer sacrifices to their goddess Hecate. Now half the world is asleep and being attacked by nightmares. It’s the murder I’m planning that’s affecting my eyes. I still see you-and some spots of blood on your blade and handle that weren’t there before. Either my eyesight is the only sense of mine that isn’t working, or it’s the only one that’s working correctly. You’re leading me the way I was going already, and I was going to use a weapon just like you. Deadly apparition, is it possible to see you but not touch you? Or are you just a dagger created by the mind, an illusion of my feverish brain? I still see you, and you look as real as this other dagger that I’m unsheathing now. I don’t have you, and yet I can still see you. Is this a dagger I see in front of me, with its handle aimed toward my hand? Come here, dagger, and let me grasp you. Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it. Witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate’s offerings, and withered murder, Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Now o’er the one half-world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtained sleep. It is the bloody business which informs Thus to mine eyes. I see thee still, And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, Which was not so before. Mine eyes are made the fools o’ th’ other senses, Or else worth all the rest. Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going, And such an instrument I was to use. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
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