Once Lady Macbeth steels herself against remorse so that “no compunctious visitings of nature / Shake my fell purpose,” she sets herself the task of persuading her husband to murder the king. It is no surprise that her fervid persuading borders at times on attack. Macbeth's resistance angers her. Shakespeare keeps the sequence (1.7.1–82) within the bounds of persuading, but it would take only a slight increase in intensity, a few subtle touches here and there, to turn it from a persuasion into a quarrel. At what point does persuading become quarreling or arguing or (to settle on the term that seems best suited here) disputing?

The sequence-generating conflict between an active character and a resisting one is present in both the persuading and the disputing sequence, but in the disputing sequence (at least in the very dramatic form of it being examined here) the active character often exhibits a resentment against the subordinate character from the outset. He believes he has been wronged and, when he enters, is hardly in a forgiving mood. Not surprisingly, he lacks the control of the persuader; he initiates the action in a state of emotional upset. Usually his attitude arouses a corresponding anger in his opponent. The battle for dominance that is the natural basis for every motivated sequence here becomes more overt – the conflict rises to the surface.