Macbeth might think he has a need for all that soulful equivocating he does in the early acts of this play: should he kill Duncan and become King as prophesied by the witches or should he remain true to his honor? But let's face it, the minute his wife reads of the prophecy, the deed is a done deal.

As indecisive as Macbeth is as he weighs his moral dilemma, Lady Macbeth is singlemindedly resolute. Duncan's fate is sealed the moment she believes fate is on the side of her rise to the top.

But this is Shakespeare, remember, so no one dimensional villain is she. Though she goads her husband into doing the bloody deed by questioning his manhood and telling him the remarkable tale of how if she had a babe suckling at her breast she would rip it from her nipple and dash its brains to bits if it stood in her way of the murder, there is more to this lady assassin.

As the story unfolds, she begins to be bothered by the subsequent murders her kingly partner carries out without her aid. When he kills his best friend Banquo to prevent Banquo's children from someday being king as also prophesied, she starts to speak about no longer knowing peace. She seems to have stopped enjoying the position she and her husband have won so expensively. But it is the even more senseless murders of Lady MacDuff and her children that drive Lady Macbeth over the edge of sanity.

The last time we see her alive, she is sleepwalking and babbling on about the deaths her ambition has caused. She is troubled by nightmares in which she cannot get the blood out of her hands. Her soliloquies, once determined and filled with gall, have become one final speech of pathos and remorse.

Soon after this sleepwalking scene, Macbeth is told his wife is dead. Her cause of death is never stated, but we know she has added to her list of sins the taking of her own life. It is this announcement that prompts Macbeth to deliver one of Shakespeare's most famous soliloquys, the tomorrow and tomorrow speech in which he despairs over the meaninglessness of life. But what a life the Lady gives us before her dusty death.

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