Shakespeare first presents Lady Macbeth as a powerful character at the exposition of the play and gets rid of the normalities of a Jacobean woman. Using Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare conveys the power that women can have. Most skilfully, through manipulation. However, Lady Macbeth's power seems to go down to a major decline towards the end of the play which could then prove that women have power but it doesn't last like men. In this case, Macbeth's power. Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as a powerful character in Act 1 Scene 5. This is shown by Lady Macbeth using a lot of feminine attributes as a negative. As she tells the spirits to 'unsex (her) here'. The use of imperative language conveys to us how fast she wants this to happen and she doesn't want any feminine qualities. This proves that Lady Macbeth is powerful because as a woman, especially a Jacobean one, your purpose is to have children and keep your lineage going. However, Lady Macbeth does not want that she wants to be purely evil and wants nothing that can keep her from doing that. The audience who would have been watching this would have thought this to be very odd as women are not supposed to be using such unfaithful language and have ungraceful thoughts. Lady Macbeth's power is also being presented in this extract through the way she greets Macbeth when he enters. This is shown when Lady Macbeth says she 'feels now the future in the instant'. This suggests that Lady Macbeth already had a decision on what she was going to do which was to commit regicide and murder Duncan. This is odd because the woman isn't normally the one to come to an unanimous decision. They don't normally have that power. Shakespeare could be trying to highlight so early on in the play that women do always have some sort of power. This alone would have brought a lot of mixed reactions from a Jacobean audience as women don't have much of a say. Shakespeare early on is already getting rid of those stereotypes. Additionally, as the play progresses we see that Lady Macbeth still has some sort of power especially over her husband. However, the middle is where we see a breaking point or even the turning point of Lady Macbeth's power. In Act 3, primarily we see that Banquo begins to become suspicious of Macbeth and how he became king and questions if he was the one who killed Duncan. Macbeth becomes weary of Banquo and hires three men to kill Banquo and his son Fleance. Furthermore, this is important because Macbeth does not inform Lady Macbeth about this plan and instead puts her to the side and says that she should be 'innocent of the knowledge dearest chuck'. This was said in Act 3 Scene 2 before Banquo was killed. The pre-modifier 'innocent' allows us to believe that Macbeth is belittling Lady Macbeth and is somewhat taking her power away from her, making it seem she is too feminine to know what is truly going on. Shakespeare could still be present Lady Macbeth as a powerful character however, he could be highlighting that it is on the decline slowly, but surely. In addition, it is important to add that in Act 3 Scene 4 when Macbeth start seeing Banquo's ghost after he has been murdered, Macbeth acts completely out of character in front of the Lords and Thanes which after they leave causes Lady Macbeth to question Macbeth's masculinity by asking 'are you a man?'. This rhetorical question is very important because it causes us to believe that Lady Macbeth is trying to find a reaction out of Macbeth by using manipulation. Alternatively, Shakespeare could be trying to use this to prove that still has some domination over her husband regardless of what may be going on. One key theme that resides with Lady Macbeth is manipulation. So Shakespeare could be trying to highlight to the audience that women have power but it isn't physical but more psychologically. Finally, as we reach the final moments of the play we discover that Lady Macbeth's power has finally come to a massive decline. This is shown by her not being mentioned once in Act 4 which in itself proves that her character is being neglected. Additionally, in Act 5 we find out that Lady Macbeth has finally been consumed by her guilt and madness, which has caused her to fall ill. This is significant because this means that Lady Macbeth's actions have caused her to become mad. One could argue that Lady Macbeth brought this on herself with the amount of influence she had on Macbeth. So, in result of this Lady Macbeth does die and Macbeth doesn't seem to be bothered about the loss of his wife. Macbeth's reaction to her death even comes across as meaningless as he said that 'she should have died hereafter'. This shows no respect or love for his wife. This is important because this proves that Lady Macbeth's power wasn't great enough to even have some sympathy from her husband after her death. Shakespeare could be conveying to the audience that the actions of women have consequences even the ones that seem to have power. However, it is necessary to add that at the end of the play Lady Macbeth is described as a 'fiend-like queen'. This proves that she was a powerful character because other people in the play saw how manipulative she was because if they didn't she would have been described in a more respectful way. Shakespeare is trying to highlight the effect that Lady Macbeth. Overall, I believe that Lady Macbeth was a powerful character to a large extent. She used the art of manipulation to get her way and even after her death it was still recognised. Lady Macbeth was a character that was smart and was not associated with the stereotypes of a Jacobean woman.