Lady Macbeth’s Conscience The events of Shakespeare’s Macbeth are triggered by an innate sense of self-serving ambition, present especially within Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Macbeth himself is a dynamic man whose ambition transformed him into an entity existing without any sense of morality. This perpetual, growing ambition clashed with his conscience, a clear differentiation between right and wrong, in a way that had eradicated it. Adversely, Lady Macbeth, driven by the same determination, had never proven to possess a conscience or even the desire to cultivate one. Frederick Kiefer suggests the contrary, claiming that “[t]he book of conscience entails personal responsibility”, a responsibility that had apparently manifested itself in Lady Macbeth’s writings during her sleepwalking scene. He theorizes that her writings were confessional, thus proving the presence of conscience. Yet Lady Macbeth’s role in Duncan’s death and as a motivator to her husband’s cruelty automatically signify a lack of conscience which is not redeemed in the sleepwalking scene. Her anxious reflections are only motivated by that same self-preservation; she ruminates in fear for her reputation but not necessarily out of guilty conscience. Lady Macbeth was introduced as a ruthless woman motivated by a selfish desire for power. She was equally ambitious and evil as she persuaded Macbeth to murder King Duncan for the sake of social mobility; for this reason, she openly renounced her humanity and requested that she be graced with cruelty: “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,” (1.5.39-42). If Lady Macbeth had any trace of a conscience, she willingly rejected it by calling for the spirits to cleanse her of it. She views “mortal thoughts”, human emotion, as a weakness, both within herself and her husband.