Macbeth is a play about death, deception and corruption. At the center of all this are Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth. As the show progresses, their relationship changes dramatically due to how they each handle their emotions following King Duncan's murder. At the beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth is a strong and domineering person. He seems able to force Macbeth to do things he wouldn't do on his own. She seems willing to trample on anyone to get what she wants. She looks ready to kill. She would have no problem dancing on the backs of the wounded for the same reason that arrogant rich people today don't care about starving children in Africa: she has never seen or experienced it. Reading Macbeth's letter telling of the witches' prophecy, she said, "Yet I fear thy nature; it is too full of the milk of human kindness to take the nearest way." He wanted to take the quick and dirty road to kingship (murder), but he didn't think Macbeth was up to it. He's never killed anyone (as far as we know), so he doesn't understand why it would be so difficult. Macbeth is a battle-hardened soldier who is no stranger to danger. In his time he killed more than a few men, women and children. We are informed of this at the beginning of the play when a sergeant tells of how Macbeth hunted down Macdonwald and "unstitched him from the nave down to his legs and fastened his head upon our battlements." But Macbeth knew the difference between right and wrong. Macdonwald was a traitor and fully deserved to be cut in half. Killing Duncan was a different story. Killing a good king/friend to gain wealth and power is not very PC and is downright immoral. When Lady Macbeth talked about killing the king, he was reluctant to talk about such a thing, then he blew her away and said, "We will talk again." Naturally, being the whipped little mama's boy that he is, he was convinced to participate in her diabolical conspiracy plan. In the end, Lady Macbeth could not kill Duncan. He says, "If he hadn't looked like my father while he slept, I wouldn't have done it." Of course this is a load of nonsense; in reality he was simply too weak to get the job done.