Short answers, pulled from the story.
Lady Macbeth is the wife of the tragic hero Macbeth in William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, written around 1603 to 1607. She goads her husband into murdering King Duncan, becomes queen of Scotland, and later dies by suicide after being driven to madness by guilt.
"Out, damned spot!" is a line Lady Macbeth speaks during her sleepwalking scene in the fifth act, where she imagines she cannot wash blood from her hands. The phrase expresses her guilt over King Duncan's murder and has become one of the most widely recognized lines in the English language.
Lady Macbeth manipulates Macbeth into committing regicide by challenging his masculinity. When he hesitates, she calls him a coward and tells him he would be more of a man by going through with the killing, a pressure that overcomes his reluctance.
Jenijoy La Belle, in her article "A Strange Infirmity: Lady Macbeth's Amenorrhea," argues that Lady Macbeth's plea to spirits to make thick her blood and stop up the passage to remorse is a request for her menstrual cycle to cease. This reading connects her wish to be free of feminine feeling to the play's repeated infanticide imagery.
Critics including Joanna Levin note that Lady Macbeth conjures spirits at the start of the play, mirroring the Weird Sisters. Jenijoy La Belle argues that both Lady Macbeth and the witches use language to summon forces that reshape physical events, whether the workings of the state or a woman's own body.
Notable actresses who have played Lady Macbeth include Sarah Siddons, Vivien Leigh, Glenda Jackson, Judi Dench, Helen McCrory, Marion Cotillard, Frances McDormand, Ruth Negga, and Isuzu Yamada. Alex Kingston played the role opposite Kenneth Branagh in a production that ran at the Manchester Festival in 2013 and transferred to New York in 2014.