While the plays rarely focus on the female characters,
Shakespeare makes their presence essential to the story as a whole. The story of
Macbeth's rise to power starts not with with his wife, but with the witches he meets who
claim to foresee him as King. This plants the seeds of the idea in his head and feeds
his ambition. It is Lady Macbeth who then pushes her husband further. She encourages
him to kill King Duncan and stands by his side when he is then crowned King. Her
eventual mental breakdown from her guilt, and her suicide, profoundly affect Macbeth and
change his perspective on all he has
"accomplished."
Hamlet's first major trouble in the play
comes not from his father's murder (which he doesn't know about) but his mother's quick
remarriage to King Hamlet's brother, Hamlet's uncle, Claudius. Hamlet is absolutely
repulsed by the decision and thinks the marriage is incestuous. His faith in women and
in humanity is shaken by his mother's actions. Unfortunately, he takes some of this out
on his true love, Ophelia. He treats her very harshly in an effort to appear crazy and
thus find out the truth of his father's murder, but in the midst of his ranting he says
some very rude things about the fickleness and shallowness of women. Hamlet wants to
save his mother from this marriage, but he ends up at the end of sharp sword due to his
accidental murder of Polonius and his part in pushing Ophelia to true craziness and
suicide.
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