Check out this list of female villains. Post your thoughts on Lady Macbeth as we meet her and learn how her mind works.
The top five stage murderesses
1. Lady Macbeth
Shakespeare’s “fiend-like queen” takes the number one spot not only for her crimes against humanity, but also for the way she has become a byword for female ambition and ruthless social aspiration.
She dominates her husband and persuades him to commit murder by making it clear she will despise him sexually if he fails to act. In mitigation, you could say she is playing the loving corporate wife, spurring her husband to advance his career. Unfortunately, the results are rather bloody. At least she has the decency to go mad.
2.Medea
Another byword for female villainy, bunny-boiler and bad mother, Medea has come to represent all that is monstrous in women. She is also a witch, which makes men doubly fear her. Crimes include fratricide, infanticide and murdering her ex-husband’s fiancee (with a poisoned dress).
But there is a good argument that Medea is more sinned against than sinning. She gives up everything for Jason (who proves treacherous) and is a vilified refugee in a strange country; even killing her own children can be interpreted as a desperate act of misguided protection. Her real crime? Getting away scot-free.
3.Goneril
Just plain nasty. And my, what a temper - not a nice female trait. The moment she gets her share of daddy Lear’s kingdom, she starts humiliating the old fool. Driven by rage and ambition, she sets out to cuckold and murder her husband.
When her equally unpleasant sister, Regan, threatens her, Goneril uncorks the poison. Eventually, she kills herself out of sheer pique, which is just as well - otherwise, she might have spontaneously combusted.
4.Lulu
The anti-heroine of Wedekind’s plays Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, sexy, amoral Lulu leaves death and destruction in her wake. She is one of the 20th century’s most potent myths and male fantasies - the eternal whore, the blank screen on which men can project fantasies about sex and death. She is always available.
In fact, Lulu is a woman who behaves just like the worst of men: a female Don Juan who loves them and leaves them - stone cold dead in the case of three husbands. Her crime? She just doesn’t care. Her punishment? She is butchered by Jack the Ripper. So that’s all right, then.
5.Salomé
Oscar Wilde’s heroine is a murderous nymphet, a sulky teenage temptress. Her crime is that she knows her own power too well and uses it - in the dance of the seven veils - to manipulate Herod, the stepfather who lusts after her, for her own petty revenge. Who can blame her?
She is a girl flexing her muscles and enjoying it. Like Lulu, she melds sex and death so perfectly that she has taken on mythic status - when her only real crime is to be a stroppy teenager, piqued because she feels she has been ignored.
Gardner, Lyn. “Sympathy for the She-Devils”. The Guardian [United Kingdom]. 8 Nov. 2006: Arts.Guardian.com.uk 18 Jan. 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
This Great God, 
We are finishing Act 1, and you can see how twisted our story is going to get. There are many characters and subplots that will compose the 5 acts of this work. Identify something that has happened in Act 1 that has made you think, peaked your curiousity, or that is memorable. Explain the event and the characters involved. Once an event has been mentioned, nobody else can use that one! Look, it’s our own mini notes section on Act 1…