RALPH: The beginning of Lady Macbeth’s speech seems pretty straightforward. She notes that her husband has ambition and wants to be king someday, but he lacks the toughness – the “illness” as she puts it -- required to achieve this goal; he is “too full of human kindness”. But then her language becomes more difficult.  The next thing she says is, “What thou wouldst highly, that wouldst thou holily”.  

DAVINA: Those lines sound funny because we don’t use the verb “would” the same way anymore. In Shakespeare’s day, it was sometimes used as the past tense of “to wish,” as in to want or desire something. And in this case, it’s being used conditionally, so ‘wouldst’ means “would want”, or “would desire”.

RALPH: So the first clause means “What you would desire highly” -- or, as we might say it: those things that you want the most.... Then what does the second clause mean, “That wouldst thou holily”?

DAVINA: Well, ‘holily’ means in a holy way, or, in a way God would approve of.

RALPH:  Oh, I see -- so she’s saying that Macbeth is the kind of guy who wants to play by the rules even to get those things he wants most in the world.

DAVINA:  That’s right.  Or more precisely: the more he wants something, the more he wants to play by the rules to get it.

RALPH: So how about the next bit – “wouldst not play false, and yet wouldst wrongly win” – that sounds like a contradiction to me.

DAVINA: I think what she means is, “Macbeth doesn’t want to do bad things -- in this case, commit treason by killing the king -- but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to be king even though he’s not entitled to it.  If it’s a contradiction, it’s a contradiction in Macbeth’s own mind.

RALPH: Okay, I think I’m following you, but this next sentence is really tough. “Thou'dst have, great Glamis, that which cries 'Thus thou must do' if thou have it, and that which rather thou dost fear to do than wishest should be undone.”

DAVINA: You come across lines like this from time to time in Shakespeare. Scholars have racked their brains trying to figure out exactly what Shakespeare was trying to say.

RALPH: Perhaps there’s a printing error, or maybe Shakespeare is using an obscure expression that no one is familiar with today.

DAVINA: Or it may simply be that Shakespeare just didn’t pay close attention to the wording.

RALPH: In any case, it’s fun to try and decipher sentences like these. Even if you can’t determine the exact meaning, you can sometimes get the general sense of what Shakespeare was trying to say.

DAVINA: In this instance, I think Lady Macbeth is saying that her husband knows that he’ll have to kill Duncan to get the crown. And even though he’s afraid to do it, if it were done, he would not wish it undone.