"Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here..." This extract leads us into the mind of the callous, sly minded, desperate woman, that is Lady Macbeth. The language in this sentence is extremely powerful. Powerful because we consider anything to do with spirits to be disturbing, evoking the powers of darkness, for example in this extract. It illustrates a picture of Lady Macbeth summoning the unknown ("raven himself") to possess her.

Lady Macbeth wants to become the living dead with no heart, so nothing lies on her conscience "make thick my blood." She wants to feel absolutely no emotion and definitely no regret for what she is hoping to get away with, "Stop up th'access and passage to remorse that no compunctious visiting of nature shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between th'effect and it."

Shakespeare paints a picture for us using imagery. We...