Everything you Know about Lady M is Wrong (Not Clickbate...Literally Everything)

What if Lady M is a kind, caring, mother who wants to take care of the love of her life and the whole kingdom?
Lady Macbeth.
This guy:

(You heard me)

Lady Macbeth makes up the driving force of the play Macbeth.
She spurs her husband on to depraved actions against king and country, including but not limited to:

• The murder of Duncan's chamberlains
• The murder of Banquo and his innocent daughter [sic] Fleance
• The attempted murder of Macduff
• The actual murder of Macduff's entire family
• The alienation of the entire kingdom
• And her suicide

Wait a minute...that isn't right.

Oh,

That is because she stops being his spur in Act II.

He goes off the rails the moment that he kills Duncan.

Macbeth starts hearing voices and killing people higgledy piggledy and Lady M is left washing her hands.

Lady M's entire reputation is based on a quick reading of the first Act of the play.

But what sort of reputation is that?

In her opening scene, Lady M receives a letter from her husband that says they are going to be made King and Queen by some creepy man-ladies.

He gives anecdotal and circumstantial evidence to confirm the report.

And she totally believes him.

She says he will be King: 

yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it

Classically, interpretations of this text are that Macbeth is a nice guy, therfore, Lady M must not be a nice guy.
That does not follow and here is why:

 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! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

What is Lady M doing in this all too famous speech?
She is getting rid of her humanity, her womanliness.
Now, you can do it effectively and be terrifyingly creepy:

But what if Lady M is just a lady?

A mother who has lost her child?

What if she is an incredibly kind individual and that is the nature of the speech.

The following scene can then be seen in context with a more nurturing, maternal figure suddenly and unexpectedly tongue lashing her husband and to be a man.

Then, her hardness is out of place and jarring as opposed to a Tuesday afternoon (seriously read the script, it's a Tuesday. Look it up).

Worse even, what if she is kind and nurturing, motherly whilst planning Duncan's murder:

When Duncan is asleep--
Whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey
Soundly invite him--his two chamberlains
Will I with wine and wassail so convince
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only: when in swinish sleep
Their drenched natures lie as in a death,
What cannot you and I perform upon
The unguarded Duncan? what not put upon
His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt
Of our great quell?

It is a laundry list of events. Chores they need to do to make him king.
And what does she say in response to his fear?

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't.

She is taking care of Macbeth, not badgering, not chastising, making sure that he is able to accomplish his goals.

He that's coming
Must be provided for: and you shall put
This night's great business into my dispatch;

She will take care of everything.

So they kill the king (spoilers).
Then what?
Macbeth goes on a killing spree the likes of which Titus would be proud.
How does Lady M respond?
By questioning his sanity at every turn.
Reassuring him that they are in the clear:

Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what's done is done.

And when it proves too much? She snaps.
Her famous washing of her hands:

Out damned spot. Out I say.

A clear manifestation of her belief that she will never be clear of all the blood they have spilled.
And yet it is the Gentlewoman's lines:

How came she by that light?

Why, it stood by her: she has light by her
continually; 'tis her command.

She is afraid of the dark.
Nothing is more touching to me than that little detail.
Afraid of the dark, sleepwalking, confessing her sins to the air. (maybe the doctor, we have no proof that she is really "asleep")
And people want to make her the epitome of cruelty and vindictiveness.
I want to reclaim Lady M as a figure of caring and nurturing.
So, my advice is pay attention to the moments when she is afraid (II.i.), let the faint be real (II.iii.), and don't leave the candle behind (V.i.).

Embrace these not as awkward moments in her arc, but genuine moments where her inner nature peeps through her hardened veneer.

I blame English teachers.
For most everything.
Mine likened the Macbeths unto pitchers of evil.
According to Google it looks something like this:

Lady M starts as really evil, Macbeth not so much.

She pours her evil into him and he starts filling up while she empties.

And then they switch over the course of five acts until Macbeth is so evil and Lady M a god damn saint.

Not so.

They are people with faults one of which is ambition, but the overriding one is kindness.

Kindness.

Let them be kind instead of creepy.