Lady Macbeth: Exploring Women Artists (2)

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. 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 murd'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry “Hold, hold!”

Lady Macbeth, from Act I, scene v.

Kate Fleetwood plays arguably the fiercest, most eviscerating lady in Shakespeare.  She does so alongside Patrick Stewart in this 2010 BBC production of Macbeth.  

Why do I bring up this reverberating passage?  Because as Jemima Kirke relates, in Unlock Art: Where are the Women? historically women were encouraged to engage in art, provided that they embodied such feminine traits as beauty, grace and modesty:

So long as a woman remains from unsexing herself, let her dabble in anything.

Shakespeare first staged Macbeth in 1611, so more than 400 years ago his Lady Macbeth would have none of that beautiful, gracious or modest nonsense.  I haven't heard anyone refer to her as a feminist, but indeed we may see her as a tragic heroine.