unsex

The company behind the smash-hit, critically acclaimed Lady Macbeth: unsex me here and Nijinsky's Last Jump will perform The Chosen at the Macrobert, a deeply personal reflection on how we experience the time left to us, on Thursday, September 12.

Lady Macbeth is the force behind Macbeth, her ruthlessness revealed in the brutal lines: "Come, you spirits, That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full, of direst cruelty!" So when Macbeth reins in his ambition to be King after Duncan rewards him with titles including Thane of Cawdor for his bravery, she drives him on.

When Lady Macbeth famously says, 'unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty,' what she means is, 'Take away my feminine "weakness" and fill me with the masculine resolve required for this task.' Carol goes from fulfilling a mother-hen role to becoming a cold-blooded strategist, particularly during Seasons 4 and 5--so much so that she even pretends to be her old self in Alexandria so that they accept her and don't see her for the power player that she is.

Joan's father grows much more intense in his threats when Joan describes her mission to "drive the English out of France" (81); Jacques d'Arc responds by saying "that rather than see her unsex herself and go away with the armies, he would require her brothers to drown her; and that if they should refuse, he would do it with his own hands" (82).

Medea does indeed seek within herself "the ancient vigour,"' but Lady Macbeth does not; she asks spirits to unsex her, and by the end of the play is suffering from Christian remorse: "hell is murky."

"Unsex Me Here: Male Cross-dressing-Dressing at the New Globe".

Lear calls Goneril "a disease that's in (his) flesh" (II.4.221), and he denounces both elder daughters as "unnatural hags", (II.4.277); Lady Macbeth calls on evil spirits to "unsex" her (I.5.38) and "take (her) milk for gall" (I.5.45).

Indeed it is also often argued that Shakespeare portrays the Scottish queen, Lady Macbeth, as a fourth witch, particularly as a result of her reference to the raven, just before her call to the 'spirits which tend on mortal thoughts' to unsex her and fill her with cruelty (Willis 1995: 221-222; Townshend 2013: 174).

In Shakespeare's play, Lady Macbeth's portrayal begins with the powerful elements of her ambitious and successful plotting of Duncan's demise, effective rhetorical manipulation of her husband to "be a man" and take action, and her position-potentially--as Macbeth's equal in their relationship, his desired "dear partner of greatness." And yet, for the most part, these powerful moments are all in the service of disorder (of tyrannical usurpation of the monarchy and the usurpation of control within her marriage) and the unnatural (through her affiliations with the supernatural in the "unsex me here" speech).

As Lady Macbeth gathers the strength to achieve her evil ends, she implores the spirits to "unsex me here." (9) She believes that her feminine gender obstructs the ability to commit evil.