Ecate di carne e sangue: il cursus (dis)honorum e l'ascesa agli inferi di Lady Macbeth

Although the explicit figure of Hecate appears predominantly in passages likely to be interpolations not attributable to Shakespeare, the pervasive malignant stasis that permeates Macbeth can be traced primarily to Lady Macbeth. Her ascent to infer-nal power and subsequent failure to fully assume the role of an earthly emissary of Hecate are discernible within Shakespeare’s own verses through a textual analysis that emphasizes semantics and symbolism. The study illustrates how Lady Macbeth’s language embodies the play’s pervasive darkness, thereby rendering her agency both human and supernatural. The methodological approach adopted is to analyze how sound and meaning are actually intended to work jointly, highlighting how they produce moral, psychological, and cosmic disequilibrium. Through this lens Lady Macbeth’s trajectory – from the performative invocation of infernal power to her failure in fully inhabiting the Hecatean archetype – illuminates Shakespeare’s intri-cate manipulation of linguistic and semantic resources to construct a specific charac-ter who, besides being a genius of crime, is also a skilled manipulator.