Starting with this speech, explain how far you think Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as a powerful women.

Shakespeare uses imperatives to suggest Lady Macbeth is powerful. "Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell" the imperative "come" is persuasive and as a result may suggest power as the character commands attention. In addition, the imperative serves to present Lady Macbeth as a figure of authority as he shows her as self-assured character with certain goals. This may serve to foreshadow the later events of the play, as in fact this soliloquy does through revealing Lady Macbeth's desire for the death of King Duncan, an act which her husband later completes. However, the imperative "come" may also imply urgency linking to Lady Macbeth's desperation for power and growing ambitions which may foreshadow her later descent into madness exclaiming "here's the smell of blood still" (Act 5, Scene 1) showing how she is haunted by her actions. Consequently, Shakespeare is using Lady Macbeth as a device to show the consequences of greed and ambition.
In addition, the quotation continues to reference the supernatural. Shakespeare uses this to play on the fears of his Jacobean audience calling upon the "dunnest smoke of hell" through this Lady Macbeth is essentially summoning the devil for help. This links to the first scene during which the three witches declare that they shall meet "when the hurly-burly’s done, // When the battle’s lost and won" essentially predicting the future. Shakespeare has used a rhyming couplet to distinguish the witches from the Macbeth family yet keeps the pairs linked with the references to supernatural showing their entwined relationship. The consistent references to the supernatural would implement fear in Jacobean audiences as they already feared the damage that could be created in daily life by witches, only encouraged by the ongoing witch hunts.