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A Modern Perspective: Macbeth

By Susan Snyder

Coleridge pronounced Macbeth to be “wholly tragic.” Rejecting the drunken Porter of Act 2, scene 3 as “an interpolation of the actors,” and perceiving no wordplay in the rest of the text (he was wrong on both counts), he declared that the play had no comic admixture at all. More acutely, though still in support of this sense of the play as unadulterated tragedy, he noted the absence in Macbeth of a process characteristic of other Shakespearean tragedies, the “reasonings of equivocal morality.” 1

Indeed, as Macbeth ponders his decisive tragic act of killing the king, he is not deceived about its moral nature. To kill anyone to whom he is tied by obligations of social and political loyalty as well as kinship is, he knows, deeply wrong:

         He’s here in double trust:

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,

Who should against his murderer shut the door,

Not bear the knife myself.                  ( 1.7.12 –16)

And to kill Duncan, who has been “so clear in his great office” (that is, so free from corruption as a ruler), is to compound the iniquity. In adapting the story of Macbeth from Holinshed’s Chronicles of Scotland, Shakespeare created a stark black-white moral opposition by omitting from his story Duncan’s weakness as a monarch while retaining his gentle, virtuous nature. Unlike his prototype in Holinshed’s history, Macbeth kills not an ineffective leader but a saint whose benevolent presence blesses Scotland. In the same vein of polarized morality, Shakespeare departs from the Holinshed account in which Macbeth is joined in regicide by Banquo and others; instead, he has Macbeth act alone against Duncan. While it might be good politics to distance Banquo from guilt (he was an ancestor of James I, the current king of England and patron of Shakespeare’s acting company), excluding the other thanes as well suggests that the playwright had decided to focus on private, purely moral issues uncomplicated by the gray shades of political expediency.

Duncan has done nothing, then, to deserve violent death. Unlike such tragic heroes as Brutus and Othello, who are enmeshed in “equivocal morality,” Macbeth cannot justify his actions by the perceived misdeeds of his victim. “I have no spur,” he admits, “To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition” ( 1.7.25 –27). This ambition is portrayed indirectly rather than directly. But it is surely no accident that the Weïrd Sisters accost him and crystallize his secret thoughts of the crown into objective possibility just when he has hit new heights of success captaining Duncan’s armies and defeating Duncan’s enemies. The element of displacement and substitution here—Macbeth leading the fight for Scotland while the titular leader waits behind the lines for the outcome—reinforces our sense that, whatever mysterious timetable the Sisters work by, this is the psychologically right moment to confront Macbeth with their predictions of greatness. Hailed as thane of Glamis, thane of Cawdor, and king, he is initially curious and disbelieving. Though his first fearful reaction ( 1.3.54 ) is left unexplained, for us to fill in as we will, surely one way to read his fear is that the word “king” touches a buried nerve of desire. When Ross and Angus immediately arrive to announce that Macbeth is now Cawdor as well as Glamis, the balance of skepticism tilts precipitously toward belief. The nerve vibrates intensely. Two-thirds of the prophecy is already accomplished. The remaining prediction, “king hereafter,” is suddenly isolated and highlighted; and because of the Sisters’ now proven powers of foreknowledge, it seems to call out for its parallel, inevitable fulfillment.

The Weïrd Sisters present nouns rather than verbs. They put titles on Macbeth without telling what actions he must carry out to attain those titles. It is Lady Macbeth who supplies the verbs. Understanding that her husband is torn between the now-articulated object of desire and the fearful deed that must achieve it (“wouldst not play false / And yet wouldst wrongly win,” 1.5.22 –23), she persuades him by harping relentlessly on manly action. That very gap between noun and verb, the desired prize and the doing necessary to win it, becomes a way of taunting him as a coward: “Art thou afeard / To be the same in thine own act and valor / As thou art in desire?” ( 1.7.43 –45). A man is one who closes this gap by strong action, by taking what he wants; whatever inhibits that action is unmanly fear. And a man is one who does what he has sworn to do, no matter what. We never see Macbeth vow to kill Duncan, but in Lady Macbeth’s mind just his broaching the subject has become a commitment. With graphic horror she fantasizes how she would tear her nursing baby from her breast and dash its brains out if she had sworn as she says her husband did. She would, that is, violate her deepest nature as a woman and sever violently the closest tie of kinship and dependence. Till now, Macbeth has resisted such violation, clinging to a more humane definition of “man” that accepts fidelity and obligation as necessary limits on his prowess. Now, in danger of being bested by his wife in this contest of fierce determinations, he accepts her simpler, more primitive equation of manhood with killing: he commits himself to destroying Duncan. It is significant for the lack of “equivocal morality” that even Lady Macbeth in this crucial scene of persuasion doesn’t try to manipulate or blur the polarized moral scheme. Adopting instead a warrior ethic apart from social morality, she presents the murder not as good but as heroic.

Moral clarity informs not only the decisions and actions of Macbeth but the stage of nature on which they are played out. The natural universe revealed in the play is essentially attuned to the good, so that it reacts to the unambiguously evil act of killing Duncan with disruptions that are equally easy to read. There are wild winds, an earthquake, “strange screams of death” ( 2.3.61 –69). And beyond such general upheaval there is a series of unnatural acts that distortedly mirror Macbeth’s. Duncan’s horses overthrow natural order and devour each other, like Macbeth turning on his king and cousin. “A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place”—the monarch of birds at its highest pitch—is killed by a mousing owl, a lesser bird who ordinarily preys on insignificant creatures ( 2.4.15 –16). Most ominous of all, on the morning following the king’s death, is the absence of the sun: like the falcon a symbol of monarchy, but expanding that to suggest the source of all life. In a general sense, the sunless day shows the heavens “troubled with man’s act” ( 2.4.7 ), but the following grim metaphor points to a closer and more sinister connection: “dark night strangles the traveling lamp” ( 2.4.9 ). The daylight has been murdered like Duncan. Scotland’s moral darkness lasts till the end of Macbeth’s reign. The major scenes take place at night or in the atmosphere of the “black, and midnight hags” ( 4.1.48 ), and there is no mention of light or sunshine except in England ( 4.3.1 ).

Later in the play, nature finds equally fitting forms for its revenge against Macbeth. Despite his violations of the natural order, he nevertheless expects the laws of nature to work for him in the usual way. But the next victim, Banquo, though his murderer has left him “safe in a ditch” ( 3.4.28 ), refuses to stay safely still and out of sight. In Macbeth’s horrified response to this restless corpse, we may hear not only panic but outrage at the breakdown of the laws of motion:

                           The time has been

That, when the brains were out, the man would die,

And there an end. But now they rise again

With twenty mortal murders on their crowns

And push us from our stools. This is more strange

Than such a murder is.                           ( 3.4.94 –99)

His word choice is odd: “ they rise,” a plural where we would expect “he rises,” and the loaded word “crowns” for heads. Macbeth seems to be haunted by his last victim, King Duncan, as well as the present one. And by his outraged comparison at the end—the violent death and the ghostly appearance compete in strangeness—Macbeth suggests, without consciously intending to, that Banquo’s walking in death answers to, or even is caused by, the murder that cut him off so prematurely. The unnatural murder generates unnatural movement in the dead. Lady Macbeth, too, walks when she should be immobile in sleep, “a great perturbation in nature” ( 5.1.10 ).

It is through this same ironic trust in natural law that Macbeth draws strength from the Sisters’ later prophecy: if he is safe until Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane, he must be safe forever:

Who can impress the forest, bid the tree

Unfix his earthbound root? Sweet bodements, good!

Rebellious dead, rise never till the Wood

Of Birnam rise . . .                  ( 4.1.109 –12)

His security is ironic because for Macbeth, of all people, there can be no dependence on predictable natural processes. The “rebellious dead” have already unnaturally risen once; fixed trees can move against him as well. And so, in time, they do. Outraged nature keeps matching the Macbeths’ transgressions, undoing and expelling their perversities with its own.

In tragedies where right and wrong are rendered problematic, the dramatic focus is likely to be on the complications of choice. Macbeth, on the contrary, is preoccupied less with the protagonist’s initial choice of a relatively unambiguous wrong action than with the moral decline that follows. H. B. Charlton noted that one could see in Richard III as well as Macbeth the biblical axiom that “the wages of sin is death”; but where the history play assumes the principle, Macbeth demonstrates why it has to be that way. 2 The necessity is not so much theological as psychological: we watch in Macbeth the hardening and distortion that follows on self-violation. The need to suppress part of himself in order to kill Duncan becomes a refusal to acknowledge his deed (“I am afraid to think what I have done. / Look on ’t again I dare not”: 2.2.66 –67). His later murders are all done by proxy, in an attempt to create still more distance between the destruction he wills and full psychic awareness of his responsibility. At the same time, murder becomes a necessary activity, the verb now a compulsion almost without regard to the object: plotted after he has seen the Weïrd Sisters’ apparitions, Macbeth’s attack on Macduff’s “line” ( 4.1.174 ) is an insane double displacement, of fear of Macduff himself and fury at the vision of the line of kings fathered by Banquo.

Yet the moral universe of Macbeth is not as uncomplicated as some critics have imagined. To see in the play’s human and physical nature only a straightforward pattern of sin and punishment is to gloss over the questions it raises obliquely, the moral complexities and mysteries it opens up. The Weïrd Sisters, for example, remain undefined. Where do they come from? Where do they go when they disappear from the action in Act 4? What is their place in a moral universe that ostensibly recoils against sin and punishes it? Are they human witches, or supernatural beings? Labeling them “evil” seems not so much incorrect as inadequate. Do they cause men to commit crimes, or do they only present the possibility to them? Macbeth responds to his prophecy by killing his king, but Banquo after hearing the one directed at him is not impelled to act at all. Do we take this difference as demonstrating that the Sisters have in themselves no power beyond suggestion? Or should we rather find it somewhat sinister later on when Banquo, ancestor of James I or not, sees reason in Macbeth’s success to look forward to his own—yet feels it necessary to conceal his hopes ( 3.1.1 –10)?

Even what we most take for granted becomes problematic when scrutinized. Does Macbeth really desire to be king? Lady Macbeth says he does, but what comes through in 1.5 and 1.7 is more her desire than his. Apart from one brief reference to ambition when he is ruling out other motives to kill Duncan, Macbeth himself is strangely silent about any longing for royal power and position. Instead of an obsession that fills his personal horizon, we find in Macbeth something of a motivational void. Why does he feel obligated, or compelled, to bring about an advance in station that the prophecy seems to render inevitable anyway? A. C. Bradley put his finger on this absence of positive desire when he observed that Macbeth commits his crime as if it were “an appalling duty.” 3

Recent lines of critical inquiry also call old certainties into question. Duncan’s saintly status would seem assured, yet sociological critics are disquieted by the way we are introduced to him, as he receives news of the battle in 1.2. On the one hand we hear reports of horrifying savagery in the fighting, savagery in which the loyal thanes participate as much as the rebels and invaders—more so, in fact, when Macbeth and Banquo are likened to the crucifiers of Christ (“or memorize another Golgotha,” 1.2.44 ). In response we see Duncan exulting not only in the victory but in the bloodshed, equating honor with wounds. It is not that he bears any particular guilt. Yet the mild paternal king is nevertheless implicated here in his society’s violent warrior ethic, its predicating of manly worth on prowess in killing. 4 But isn’t this just what we condemn in Lady Macbeth? Cultural analysis tends to blur the sharp demarcations, even between two such figures apparently totally opposed, and to draw them together as participants in and products of the same constellation of social values.

Lady Macbeth and Duncan meet in a more particular way, positioned as they are on the same side of Scotland’s basic division between warriors and those protected by warriors. The king is too old and fragile to fight; the lady is neither, but she is barred from battle by traditional gender conventions that assign her instead the functions of following her husband’s commands and nurturing her young. In fact, of course, Lady Macbeth’s actions and outlook thoroughly subvert this ideology, as she forcefully takes the lead in planning the murder and shames her husband into joining in by her willingness to slaughter her own nurseling. It is easy to call Lady Macbeth “evil,” but the label tends to close down analysis exactly where we ought to probe more deeply. Macbeth’s wife is restless in a social role that in spite of her formidable courage and energy offers no chance of independent action and heroic achievement. It is almost inevitable that she turn to achievement at second hand, through and for her husband. Standing perforce on the sidelines, like Duncan once again, she promotes and cheers the killing.

Other situations, too, may be more complex than at first they seem. Lady Macduff, unlike Lady Macbeth, accepts her womanly function of caring for her children and her nonwarrior status of being protected. But she is not protected. The ideology of gender seems just as destructive from the submissive side as from the rebellious, when Macduff deserts her in order to pursue his political cause against Macbeth in England and there is no husband to stand in the way of the murderers sent by Macbeth. The obedient wife dies, with her cherished son, just as the rebellious, murderous lady will die who consigned her own nursing baby to death. The moral universe of Macbeth has room for massive injustice. Traditional critics find Lady Macbeth “unnatural,” and even those who do not accept the equation of gender ideology with nature can agree with the condemnation in view of her determined suppression of all bonds of human sympathy. Clear enough. But we get more blurring and crossovers when Macduff’s wife calls him unnatural. In leaving his family defenseless in Macbeth’s dangerous Scotland, he too seems to discount human bonds. His own wife complains bitterly that “he wants the natural touch”; where even the tiny wren will fight for her young against the owl, his flight seems to signify fear rather than natural love ( 4.2.8 –16). Ross’s reply, “cruel are the times,” while it doesn’t console Lady Macduff and certainly doesn’t save her, strives to relocate the moral ambiguity of Macduff’s conduct in the situation created by Macbeth’s tyrannical rule. The very political crisis that pulls Macduff away from his family on public business puts his private life in jeopardy through the same act of desertion. But while acknowledging the peculiar tensions raised by a tyrant-king, we may also see in the Macduff family’s disaster a tragic version of a more familiar conflict: the contest between public and private commitments that can rack conventional marriages, with the wife confined to a private role while the husband is supposed to balance obligations in both spheres.

Malcolm is allied with Duncan by lineage and with Macduff by their shared role of redemptive champion in the final movement of the play. He, too, is not allowed to travel through the action unsullied. After a long absence from the scene following the murder of Duncan, he reappears in England to be sought by Macduff in the crusade against Macbeth. Malcolm is cautious and reserved, and when he does start speaking more freely, what we hear is an astonishing catalogue of self-accusations. He calls himself lustful, avaricious, guilty of every crime and totally lacking in kingly virtues:

                Nay, had I power, I should

Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,

Uproar the universal peace, confound

All unity on earth.                  ( 4.3.113 –16)

Before people became so familiar with Shakespeare’s play, I suspect many audiences believed what Malcolm says of himself. Students on first reading still do. Why shouldn’t they? He has been absent from the stage for some time, and his only significant action in the early part of the play was to run away after his father’s murder. When this essentially unknown prince lists his vices in lengthy speeches of self-loathing, there is no indication—except an exaggeration easily ascribable to his youth—that he is not sincere. And if we do believe, we cannot help joining in Macduff’s distress. Malcolm, the last hope for redeeming Scotland from the tyrant, has let us down. Duncan’s son is more corrupt than Macbeth. He even sounds like Macbeth, whose own milk of human kindness ( 1.5.17 ) was curdled by his wife; who threatened to destroy the whole natural order, “though the treasure / Of nature’s germens tumble all together / Even till destruction sicken” ( 4.1.60 –63). In due course, Malcolm takes it all back; but his words once spoken cannot simply be canceled, erased as if they were on paper. We have already, on hearing them, mentally and emotionally processed the false “facts,” absorbed them experientially. Perhaps they continue to color indirectly our sense of the next king of Scotland.

Viewed through various lenses, then, the black and white of Macbeth may fade toward shades of gray. The play is an open system, offering some fixed markers with which to take one’s basic bearings but also, in closer scrutiny, offering provocative questions and moral ambiguities.

• “Notes for a Lecture on Macbeth ” [c. 1813], in Coleridge’s Writings on Shakespeare , ed. Terence Hawkes (New York: Capricorn, 1959), p. 188.
• H. B. Charlton, Shakespearian Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), p. 141.
• A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (London: Macmillan, 1904), p. 358.
• James L. Calderwood, If It Were Done: “Macbeth” and Tragic Action (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), pp. 77–89.

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Macbeth: Analysis and Themes

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Macbeth is, along with the character of Iago in Othello and his earlier portrayal of Richard III, William Shakespeare’s most powerful exploration and analysis of evil.

Although we can find precursors to Macbeth in the murderer-turned-conscience-stricken-men of Shakespeare’s earlier plays – notably the conspirator Brutus in Julius Caesar and Claudius in Hamlet – Macbeth provides us with a closer and more complex examination of how a brave man with everything going for him might be corrupted by ambition and goading into committing an act of murder.

It’s worth examining how Shakespeare creates such a powerful depiction of one man persuaded to do evil and then wracked by his conscience for doing so. What follows is a short analysis, but one which attempts to address some of the key – not to mention the most interesting – aspects of Macbeth . You can read our summary of  Macbeth  here .

The sources for Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Macbeth was a real Scottish king, although he was somewhat different from the ambitious, murderous creation of William Shakespeare. His wife was real too, but Lady Macbeth’s real name was Gruoch and Macbeth’s real name was Mac Bethad mac Findlaích.

The real Macbeth killed Duncan in battle in 1040 and Macbeth (or Mac Bethad) actually went on to rule for 17 years, until he was killed and Macbeth’s stepson, known as Lulach the Idiot, became king (though he only ruled for less than a year – then Malcolm, as Malcolm III, took the crown). Where did Shakespeare get the story from, then, and what did he change?

The plot of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a combination of two stories: the story of Macbeth and the story of the murder of King Duffe by Donwald and his wife, which Shakespeare read about in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles . The Three Witches appear in Holinshed, but as ‘nymphs or fairies’, suggesting beautiful young women rather than old, ugly hags.

Holinshed’s King Duncan is a weak and feeble ruler, who has unfairly named his own son Prince of Cumberland (and thus heir to the throne), thwarting Macbeth’s own (just) claim to the throne, through his wife’s previous marriage and her son by her first husband.

In Holinshed, then, Macbeth has every reason to have a grievance against Duncan, rather than being motivated solely by ‘vaulting ambition’. When Duncan proclaims Malcolm his heir and Prince of Cumberland, Macbeth does not see it as a slight on him and his claim to the throne – for he appears to have no genuine claim. Instead, he sees it as the turning point: if he is to become King then he must take the crown by force.

What’s more, in Holinshed’s chronicle, Banquo actually helps Macbeth to murder Duncan. Shakespeare altered the character of Banquo because his King, James I of England (James VI of Scotland, of course) claimed descent from Banquo. This explains the scene in Macbeth with the mirrors displaying Banquo’s descendants – eventually culminating in King James himself. Banquo will certainly ‘get’ (i.e. beget) kings, all right.’

This is what led the critic William Empson to regard Shakespeare’s version of Macbeth as a ‘Just-So Story’, like ‘How the Elephant Got Its Trunk’: it explains how James came to be King, over half a millennium after the events of Macbeth .

The other story from Holinshed, detailing the murder of King Duffe, is much closer to the plot of Shakespeare’s play. In the tenth century, a century before the real Macbeth lived, Donwald, egged on by his wife, murders King Duffe (although in this version Donwald gets the servants to commit the murder rather than bearing the knife himself). Donwald and his wife get Duffe’s personal attendants drunk, and then to divert suspicion Donwalde blames them for their master’s murder, killing them in pretend rage.

Themes of Macbeth

Macbeth is a play that begins with the Weird Sisters discussing their future meeting, and ends with Macduff and the other survivors preparing to go and see Malcolm crowned King.

Even the soliloquies in Macbeth seem unusually focused on not just the contemplation of a future course of action (for that’s a common feature of many soliloquies in many other plays) but on the displacement of time that the play is preoccupied with: ‘If it were done, when ’tis done’, begins one of Macbeth’s most famous speeches, while he greets the news of Lady Macbeth with his celebrated meditation on ‘tomorrow’:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.

The first words Lady Macbeth speaks to her husband in the play show how her ambitions for her and her husband are already making her mind leap from the present into the future:

Thy letters have transported me beyond This ignorant present, and I feel now The future in the instant.

But the glue that keeps all of these future meditations in place, and acts as the main device in Macbeth linking present to future, is the role of prophecy.

It’s worth stopping to consider and analyse the role of prophecy in Macbeth . It’s true that the Witches are clearly meant to be supernatural, and their prophecies are supposedly founded on – well, on their witchcraft. One of the reasons Shakespeare may have been drawn to the story of Macbeth is that, as well as speaking to King James I’s Scottish blood, it also played to his interest in witchcraft, black magic, and the supernatural.

Indeed, the King even wrote a book about it, Daemonologie , which had been published in 1597, six years before he came to the English throne. But the clever thing about the prophecies is that we are left to decide how much what happens in the play was foretold in the Witches’ prophecy and how much was a result of the course of action Macbeth decided on, once he had knowledge of the prophecy.

We talk of ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’, and Macbeth as a piece of drama leaves us in some doubt as to the relationship between Fate and free agency. If Macbeth had never been told by the Witches that he would be Thane of Cawdor, he would still have been made Thane of Cawdor. But would he still have become King?

For Macbeth to become King, he needed to know that it was ordained that he would one day sit on the throne, so he could then murderously take it from the current incumbent. If Macbeth had not acted upon the prophecy, it may not have come true.

A similar ambiguity surrounding the role of fate and the role of individual agency governs the plot of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex ; although Shakespeare’s tragic model was more Senecan than ancient Greek, Macbeth is perhaps the play in his oeuvre which comes the closest to following the model for a good tragedy set out in Aristotle’s Poetics .

Similarly, Banquo starts to take his prophecy seriously once he sees Macbeth’s coming true. Nevertheless, the idea that no man of woman born being able to harm Macbeth isn’t ever tested to the full: Macbeth may simply be unusually lucky in combat, and Macduff, regardless of his caesarean section, may just have proved lucky; at the same time, believing that having been ‘from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped’ made him invincible against the tyrannical Macbeth may have given him the self-belief that he could bring the usurper down. The stories we tell ourselves about our own lives, and our destinies, shape what we do.

Ambition – or ‘vaulting ambition’ as Macbeth himself puts it – is another central theme of the play. Hearing the prophecy from the Witches convinces Macbeth that he could be King. Indeed, more than that, the prophecy suggests that he is meant to be King. Although Duncan has ‘honour’d [him] of late’, and Macbeth knows that to kill the king who had raised him to the title of Thane of Cawdor would be, among other things, an act of supreme ingratitude, Macbeth is driven to commit murder so he can seize the crown.

Everything that happens afterwards – his dispatching of the hired killers to murder Banquo, the attempted murder of Fleance, the killing of Macduff’s wife and children, and the final battle at Dunsinane – is a result of this one act, an act that was inspired by both Macbeth’s private ambition and his wife’s lust for power.

It’s worth remembering that Macbeth was almost certainly written shortly after the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot in November 1605. (There are a number of local allusions to this recent attempt at politically and religiously motivated terrorism: the numerous instances of the word ‘equivocation’ in the play refer to the Jesuit Father Garnet, who knew of the Plot and consorted with the conspirators.)

The ‘moral’ of Macbeth , if we can run the risk of reducing the play to an ethical message in this way, is that to usurp the ruler of a kingdom is usually a Bad Idea, at least if the ruler is generally thought to be a good one and your motivation for wanting to kill and replace them is your own grasping ambition to be monarch yourself. Which brings us to the last major theme of Macbeth worth mentioning in this short analysis (before the analysis becomes somewhat less than short)…

It would be inaccurate to say Macbeth feels remorse for the murder of Duncan. Even Claudius, the ‘smiling villain’ of Hamlet who killed a king so he could take the throne for himself, expresses something approaching a pricking of conscience for murdering his own brother, acknowledging that he cannot very well appear penitent before God if he doesn’t relinquish everything he’s gained by his murderous deed.

But Macbeth’s guilt over the murders of Banquo and Duncan is less remorse than it is fear of being discovered, and one bad deed gives birth to another, each of which has to be carried out to make Macbeth and his wife ‘safe’, to use the word that recurs throughout the play (a dozen times, including ‘safely’, ‘safety’, and other variants).

Even when Banquo’s ghost appears to Macbeth at the banquet, and appears to him alone, suggesting it is a manifestation of his own guilty conscience, he is terrified that the ghost’s presence will betray his secret, rather than wracked with remorse for killing his friend. Angus’ wonderfully vivid image of Macbeth’s guilt (‘Now does he feel / His secret murders sticking on his hands’) reminds us that ‘hands’ and ‘eyes’ and other body parts are often somewhat disembodied in this play, as numerous critics have acknowledged.

From Macbeth’s bloody hand (‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?’) to Lady Macbeth’s feverish somnambulistic hand-washing, to Macbeth’s early words in an aside, signalling his deadly ambition (‘The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, / Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see’), eyes and hands are at odds in this play, as if the eye countenances the evil carried out by the hand, with the wielder of the dagger turning a blind eye.

But as Angus’ words and Lady Macbeth’s night-time mimed ablutions demonstrate, one cannot so easily remove one’s mind from the hand that does a terrible deed.

One final piece of Macbeth trivia…

Macbeth is supposed to be cursed. The idea of the ‘curse’ of  Macbeth  has a complicated origin, though it was certainly given a leg up in 1898 when the novelist and wit Max Beerbohm put about the idea that the play was unlucky.

That said, it has had its fair share of tragedies and disasters: in a 1942 production starring John Gielgud, four people involved in the production died, including two of the Witches and the man playing Duncan. If you say ‘Macbeth’ in a theatre, you are meant to walk three times in a circle anti-clockwise, then either spit or say a rude word.

In 1849,  Macbeth even   caused a riot in New York . The Astor Place Riot was caused by two rival actors arguing about whose portrayal of Macbeth  was better. American actor Edwin Forrest and English thespian William Charles Macready were both playing the role of Macbeth in different productions at different theatres on the same night, and a longstanding rivalry erupted.

Another notable nineteenth-century production of the play (featuring acting rivalry) involves the so-called ‘worst poet in the English language’, who once played Macbeth on stage – and refused to die at the end.

As we revealed in our selection of  interesting facts about Scottish poet William McGonagall , when McGonagall – who has a reputation for being the worst poet in English – played the role of Macbeth in a stage production, he was so annoyed at being upstaged by his co-star, who was playing Macduff, that when Macduff went to kill Macbeth at the end of the play, he found his foe mysteriously unvanquishable.

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6 thoughts on “Macbeth: Analysis and Themes”

Eqivocation: Shakespeare (whose father was a friend of William Catesby, the father of Robert Catesby, one of the leaders in the alleged Gunpowder Plot) may well have been drawing attention to his own loyalist credentials when he shows the Porter admitting ‘an equivator’ to Hell. On the other hand he may have been doing a bit of equivocating himself. It depends how you say the line “who committed treason enough for God’s sake” it can simply be an exclamation “for God’s sake!” or mean “he committed treason enough for God’s sake…” he was one of ‘God’s traitors’ as John Shakespeare almost certainly, and William very probably were.

To create a breach of time hundreds of years in each direction: The Scotland that the historical Macbeth occupied was a tough, violent place demanding that a monarch be capable of meeting all challenges. If a monarch could be bested, deposed, all the better for the kingdom. Duncan’s nobility, a soft virtue, requires Bellona’s bridegroom succeed on the battlefield, and he doesn’t realize how dangerous such a warrior can be, especially with an ambitious woman goading him on. Now rocket forward hundreds of years to see the philosophical realization predicted in the tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech Macbeth ruminates upon hearing of Lady Macbeth’s death. (N.B. She dies off stage like most of the deaths in the play which conform to Aristotle’s Poetics which holds that violence on stage “but teaches bloody instruction.”) What does life signify? Nothing. Macbeth’s speech anticipates the 20th C. philosophy of existentialism. We come from nothing and we go to nothing. Any performance of the Scottish play in which the Three Sisters are performed exceedingly well enters the dreamscape of all the audience. The play is bloody, yes, and eerie too, as it travels in time.

I will refrain from the kind of lofty comments already given on here and just say your last story made me snort out loud :D

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Macbeth Ambition Essay ― What You Need to Know About the Main Character?

Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s creations. It reveals the main character’s inner world and all his actions done for the sake of power. Diving into the essence and grasping the play’s central message may be challenging without deeply analyzing the text. If you are not a passionate reader and hesitate about the correctness of your ideas, you may turn to us with a ‘ Do my essay !’ request or refer to some expert samples to grab some bright thoughts!

Few Words About Macbeth

The tragedy of William Shakespeare is a striking example of how damaging both physical and psychological ambitions can be and craving for power for a person and surrounding people. In the play, which can often be assigned to analyze in an essay about Macbeth, we follow the life path of Scottish general Macbeth, who received a prophecy from three witches about his future prosperity and King of Scotland title.

He killed Scottish King Duncan to gain power faster to satisfy his ambitions and reach his aims. What is interesting is that Macbeth followed the advice of his wife, Lady Macbeth, in the bloody place of obtaining kingship. Many people and guards who stood in the way of the throne, including Banquo, Macbeth’s friend and a general of Duncan’s army, were killed. After becoming obsessed with power, nothing could stop him. As a result, the bloodbath and upcoming civil war lead to the madness and death of Macbeth and his wife. This plot is often taken for analysis in Macbeth essay to reveal the essence of ambitions and their damaging results.

How to Showcase Ambitions in Macbeth Essay

It mainly associates with positive and goal-reaching character traits when discussing ambitious people. However, when writing Macbeth essay on ambition, it must be clearly distinguished that the main character turns the wrong way and uses his power to satisfy his ego.

During the five acts of the tragedy, Macbeth struggles with his obsessive idea of reigning. In the first act, we may observe that after winning the battle with Norway’s allied forces, Macbeth, a kingsman, was praised by King Duncan. Perhaps the chief event that encouraged Macbeth to do such cruel actions was a prediction of three witches that foretold his new titles and crowns. It was a pushing point that turned the previously skeptical man to become ambitious and decisive in what he did.

Not the last role in the transformation of Macbeth should be given to his wife, Lady Macbeth. She generated an idea to kill the king and, thus, facilitate the prediction realization. We may notice that it was not a single call for action. In addition, they jointly prepared a plan of killing and convincing chamberlains.

When you work on Macbeth essay on ambition, pay attention to the second act in which they realized their bloody intention and killed Dunkan. It was their first step toward reaching their ambitions at any cost. Even though Macbeth and his wife started healing voices and suffered from hallucinations, it did not stop them. Instead, while Macbet struggled with his fears and guilt, his wife stayed cold and decisive, insisting on keeping moving the same way.

In the middle of the play, we may see how ambitions take over sound mind and Macbeth when he asks murderers to kill his friend Banquo, who has a chance to become the next king. When you reveal devilish ambition in Macbeth essay, do not hesitate to mention that even understanding being on the wrong side, he would not stop saying there is no way back. Till the end of the play, it becomes obvious that he became a tyrant and despot manipulated by his wife. Nothing except death could stop them. That was the final part of the play.

How to Use Macbeth Example Essay

Today, we may also notice people obsessed with endless power and desire to prove their superiority over others. Unfortunately, persuading such a category of freaks with words is hard, and only life can drive a good lesson. However, Shakespeare’s tragedy provides us with food for thinking and analyzing the worthiness of our ambitions.

Teachers often assign papers on this topic, and you may find a Macbeth essay example for any taste on our site. Inspiring samples contain deep analysis of the events and help to understand the play’s message. If you need a professional from the best UK essay writing service , turn to us, and we will do our best to assist with challenging assignments.

When was Macbeth written?

The tragedy of William Shakespeare was first published in Folio in 1623. It is considered one of the shortest plays of Shakespeare. However, there are no distinct dates of playwriting. Until this time, scholars argued concerning the time when Shakespeare wrote his creation. The earliest assumptions of play issuing are 1599, but many investigators disagree, considering it was written no earlier than 1603. The majority of critics agree that 1606 is a year of play creation.

How does Shakespeare present ambition in Macbeth?

The effect of groundless predictions and political ambitions of Scottish general Macbeth, obsessed with power and kingship, not hesitating any methods. Reaching his aim of becoming the king of Scotland, he became more cruel and mad with his idea that is an answer, ‘How is ambition presented in Macbeth’s essay?’ And what they may result in.

For a more detailed exploration ambition in Macbeth have a read of this...

Ambition is generally considered to be one of them main themes of macbeth. most sites list ambition as being macbeth's hamartia - which is the weakness that causes someone's downfall. sparknotes , describes it like this:, "the main theme of macbeth—the destruction wrought when ambition goes unchecked by moral constraints —finds its most powerful expression in the play’s two main characters. macbeth is a courageous scottish general who is not naturally inclined to commit evil deeds, yet he deeply desires power and advancement .", it goes on to say:, "although he is encouraged by the witches, macbeth’s true downfall is his own ambition . lady macbeth is as ambitious as her husband, encouraging him to commit murder to achieve their goals.", you'll find variants of this idea on most websites and in most interpretations of the play. controversially, i'm offering another reading of the play. you can take it or leave it, or - if you're smart enough - you'll just be able to offer this as one interpretation, while appreciating that there can be others., and remember that any interpretation of the play is fine as long as it is backed up with evidence from the text., my argument in a nutshell:, macbeth wasn't ambitious the throne, but was the victim of a magic spell that made him want to kill duncan. the witches planted the idea into his head - almost like he gets possessed - and the play isn't actually about macbeth's ambition at all, but a quite misogynistic play that warns the audience about the dangers of witchcraft., macbeth at the opening of the play, you never get a second chance to make a first impression; that's good advice. and it's never more important than for a writer of fiction. the first impression we get of a character sets their story in motion; we're going to make all our judgements of them based on what is established about them at the beginning of a story. it's also worth bearing in mind that shakespeare could have started this story anywhere, with macbeth doing anything., as it happens, the first time we encounter macbeth it's through a story told by a sergeant about how macbeth has almost single-handedly won a battle in support of duncan. from an audience's point of view, this says a few key things about macbeth: he's brave, he's tough, he's a perfect macho hero. but, most importantly, shakespeare establishes that macbeth is loyal to duncan. and there's a few key quotes that confirm this:, brave macbeth, well he deserves that name : this quote establishes macbeth as a real jacobean hero - the name here refers to a title, as though he's become sir macbeth, or lord macbeth; but in this case it's brave macbeth. names and titles were very important to jacobean men - your name was in many ways your most sacred possession., his sword smoked with bloody execution : alongside making it clear that macbeth's blade was moving so quickly it caused smoke, this quote establishes that macbeth is a killer but not a murderer: he's an executioner. this means he kills with the king's law on his side and establishes that, at this stage in the play, he is definitely fighting for duncan., he carved his passage : this is interesting as it suggests that macbeth isn't someone who's easily led astray. given the fact that he ends up killing duncan against his wishes this seems strange - unless there's something more at play than simple persuasion. this would seem strange except that the people doing the persuading are actual magical witches (and his wife, who's probably a witch as well), disdaining fortune : again, this is interesting: the phrase suggests that macbeth "disdains" - which means doesn't like, or dismisses - "fortune." here, fortune could mean money, which suggests he wouldn't kill duncan for cash; or "fortune" could mean fate or prophecy - which suggests that he isn't the kind of guy to be led astray by something as simple as a prophecy. but was there more to the prophecy than just a suggestion, and is this really saying that even someone as brave and independent as macbeth could be led astray when magic is involved., bellona's bridegroom : this is a great, and often under-appreciated image. bellona was the wife of mars, who was the roman god of war. so in this image, ross is comparing macbeth to mars, the god of war. however, here, macbeth isn't the focus of the image, bellona is - the wife of mars. in a wonderfully subtle way, shakespeare is reminded us that even here - in his moment of triumph - macbeth is playing second-fiddle to the really violent psychopath in the play: his wife, i have won golden opinions of late : here, macbeth is talking about his rise to the position of thane of cawdor. he's clearly proud of what he's won, and doesn't want anymore. this line comes just after he's said that he doesn't want to kill duncan and is a pretty clear sign that he's "not without ambition" but isn't drowning in a sea of it, macbeth meets the witches, during the opening of the play, macbeth is presented as being fiercely loyal to duncan, but by the end of act 1 scene 3 he's thinking of killing duncan and stealing the throne. so something must have changed during this scene. there are two obvious answers here:, a) the witches awoke his own desire; or, b) he was placed under the influence of a magic spell., macbeth: so fair and foul a day i have not seen : macbeth's first line in the play paraphrases (which means almost quotes) the witches' chant from the opening. surely this is shakespeare suggesting that he's already under their influence, banquo: why do you seem to fear things which do sound so fair : here, banquo is describing macbeth's reactions to what the witches have said, which begs the question: if macbeth had wanted to be king, why did he "fear" the witches' words this seems more like the reactions of someone who didn't want to be king - a fact that fits much more neatly with the character we've heard about up to this point., macbeth: to be king stands not within the prospect of belief : macbeth clearly doesn't think it's possible to be king, so can he really be described as being ambitious for the throne also, this line suggests that being king isn't something he's ever really thought of before and so it doesn't make sense to say that he was ambitious for the throne before this scene., banquo: look how my partner's rapt : to be "rapt" by something was to be lost in a kind of religious trace - the phrase comes from the rapture. just after macbeth hears what the witches say banquo says that he becomes "rapt" - is this shakespeare describing someone going through a kind of possession this is the moment when the witches take control., macbeth: the thought of murder "shakes so my single state of man that function of smothered" : this is macbeth saying that the thought of killing duncan is so abhorrent to his masculinity that he thinks he won't be able to do it., macbeth: if chance will have me crowned, why then chance can crown me without my stir : this comes at the end of the scene, and it's basically macbeth saying 'oh well, if i'm meant to be king i guess it'll happen but i'm not doing anything about it.' whatever else you can say about his ambition, it definitely isn't very strong., looking back over those lines, we see someone who hadn't thought of being king before, who gets lost in some kind of religious trance - after having met some witches on a heath - that he then starts thinking of doing something that he find horrible. reflecting on that, it's worth comparing this line to the comment from sparknotes at the top of the page where they claim that macbeth "deeply desires power" and that his ambition "goes unchecked" (which means his ambition is out of control.), so here we have someone who "deeply desires power" and yet has never thought that being king is possible; and whose ambition is out of control and yet who says he'll do nothing about it. it's difficult to see where sparknotes are getting their ideas from..., the most important line in the play, according to my reading of the play, macbeth wasn't particularly ambitious for the throne and yet, during act 1 scene 3, he started to think about killing duncan. what happened there for me the answer lies in two words from this speech., after he hears what the witches have to say, he says:, " why do i yield to that suggestion, whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, and make my seated heart knock at my ribs,, against the use of nature", in a nutshell, this means: why i am i giving in to something that makes my hair stand up in horror, and my heart start to race in an uncomfortable way - and which is, most importantly: against my very nature., so, in this short speech, he says that the idea of killing duncan makes him so scared that his hair stands up and his heart races, and is against his very nature - the most fundamental part of who he is. he's basically saying why is he starting to want to do this thing, but the key words here are "yield" and "suggestion." and the fundamental question is: can you "yield" to a "suggestion" that has come from yourself, it's worth just clarifying what these words mean:, yield : to give way to arguments, demands, or pressure., suggestion : an idea or plan put forward for consideration., so: can you "give way to an argument, demand or pressure" and agree to "an idea or plan put forward for consideration" if that plan was your own, surely you can only "give in" to an "idea" that has come from someone else... and if that's the case then the idea of killing duncan didn't come from macbeth - it came from the witches., and if that's the case, then the entire play takes on a completely different meaning., lady macbeth, lady macbeth is not like her husband. she is very ambitious and shakespeare makes this clear right from the off., during the opening 4 scenes in the play, we see macbeth fight himself to the position of thane of cawdor - which was one of the highest positions in the scottish nobility. however, as soon as lady macbeth appears on stage she starts worrying that he's not got what it takes to be really ambitious. it's a bit like seeing someone who's just played the best game in footballing history, and won the armband to be captain of liverpool; but their wife starts complaining that they're not really ambitious as they're not captain of england too., her exact words are that macbeth is "not without ambition, but without the illness that would attend it." some people have argued that this line suggests that macbeth is ambitious, but the line "art not without ambition" isn't quite that. if i say my friend is coming to play football next week, and someone asks if they're any good and i say: "well, they're not not good" you should probably manage your expectations regarding how good they actually are. in many ways, this is really lady macbeth saying that, in fact, he's not really that ambitious at all., when macbeth arrives on stage a few moments later there is a very telling exchange: lady macbeth greets her husband with a long list of his titles, but macbeth greets his wife by calling her "my dearest love." from this brief exchange, their first on stage, it would seem that macbeth loves his wife, while she sees him as a means to success. it is absolutely true that women in jacobean england weren't supposed to be ambitious for anything themselves; women achieved success if their husbands did, which means that for lady macbeth to achieve her own ambitions she has to motivate her husband., when thinking about the plot to kill duncan, it is definitely worth remembering lady macbeth's role in it: she suggested it, she planned it, and she made sure it was carried out effectively. the only thing she didn't do, in fact, was kill duncan herself., despite getting what she's always wanted, lady macbeth doesn't seem very happy. she doesn't have a moment where she celebrates what she's won, and the only real lines she has directly to the audience have her expressing some dismay and discomfort at what she has won. she admits that she got her "desire" but says it comes without her feeling "content." eventually, this dissatisfaction catches up with her and she starts sleepwalking, riddled with guilt. it seems that she cannot escape what she has done, which is a shame as she didn't even seem to enjoy it while she had it, art not without ambition - here lady macbeth confirms that her husband has some ambition, but probably not loads. he's not without ambition, but that isn't how you'd describe someone who was drowning in it, come you spirits - perhaps lady macbeth's real ambitions stretch as far as ordering the spirits around she certainly won't draw any lines underneath what she wants to achieve, including, where necessary, enlisting the help of the supernatural., unsex me here - this is one of the most misunderstood lines in macbeth. a lot of people talk about lady macbeth wanting to become more masculine here in order that she can seize power. however, the reality of the masculine codes of loyalty meant that it wouldn't have been possible for her to kill duncan while remaining 'masculine.' here, she asks to have gender removed entirely - so she's not constrained by feminine or masculine codes - and this would have made her able to kill duncan and seize the throne., my dearest love - lady macbeth lists macbeth's titles when she meets him, he simply calls her "my dearest love." this shows that she's interested in his position, while he just loves her. it's interesting though as he calls her "dear" or "dearest" four times in the play, and something that is "dear" is precious, but "dear" also means expensive. and it is certainly true that lady macbeth's ambitions for the throne became very expensive for macbeth., what beast was't that made you break this enterprise to me - lady macbeth says this to macbeth while they're arguing about whether to kill duncan. here, she's doing something called gaslighting him, which means she's claiming he's said something that he hadn't actually said. in fact, killing duncan was lady macbeth's idea - she's the ambitious one after all., nought's had, all's spent where desire's got without content - this comes from act 3 scene 2, which is a great scene when looking at how the macbeth's felt while they were on the throne. lady macbeth seems disappointed. she says that they've got nothing ("nought") but spent everything, and have for their "desire" but are not "content." she's basically a bit gutted that she's got what she wanted but isn't happy... but maybe sometimes that's the way with ambition - you can never really have enough.

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Macbeth essay. Wrecked by Ambition

Aniqa Aslam

Macbeth: Wrecked by Ambition

“Macbeth” by William Shakespeare is a tragic play which tells the terrible tale of a once powerful and respected general who is brought down by his own malicious ambition.

The main character, Macbeth, who was once the envy of many, becomes immoral due to a yearning for power which drives him to commit despicable misdemeanours against his own people.

Shakespeare brilliantly portrays how the predominant character is intensively guilt-ridden by his own exploits, then adapts slaughtering paranoia before he resigns from his life altogether. Meanwhile, Macbeth’s deeds, driven by his longings and ambition, have caused others to despise him.

Before Macbeth’s reckless ambition begins to control his actions, he is thought of as a ruthless, heroic, yet noble soldier. In the early scenes of act one, King Duncan hears highly of Macbeth’s performance on the bloody battlefield, where he massacred a Scottish traitor venturously. Due to the praises of the Captain, the reader already has a vivid idea of how respected and esteemed Macbeth is at the start of the play. The wounded Captain even says;

“For brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name – disdained fortune, with his brandished steel… like valour’s minion.”

This shows that Macbeth is hugely admired by someone who is probably just a mere acquaintance. At this point in the play, Macbeth definitely has ambition because he wouldn’t have gotten this far without it, but the difference is that even though he has this ambition, he still receives worship and honour.

Once Macbeth is titled Thane of Cawdor, his controlling ambition begins to direct his thought and actions. When Macbeth and Banquo meet the weird sisters and hear their queer prophecies, Macbeth is determined – or even desperate – to hear more about his upcoming success:

“Stay you imperfect speakers. Tell me more.”

This is the first sign of his ambition as he refuses to overlook the witches’ predictions and his tone of voice also implies his desperation as he speaks rapidly and angrily, in short sentences. In scene seven of act one, Macbeth is losing a battle against his own ambition as it grasps and influences his thoughts greatly, in his soliloquy; he admits that his ambition is too big:

“I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on the other”.

This is a preview of the whole essay

Macbeth states that he has no real reason to kill Duncan, but his excessive ambition is too dominant to subside. He already has evil thoughts in his mind at an early stage of the play as he is hoping for/planning the death of a noble man and his innocent children. It makes the reader wonder how drastically he will change throughout the rest of the play and how uncontrollable his ambition will become.

After murdering Duncan, Macbeth is suddenly hit by immense remorse and anguish, he becomes a wreck.

“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No: this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.”

The enormity of his crime has awakened Macbeth and given him a powerful sense of guilt that will hound him throughout the play. Duncan’s blood serves as the symbol of that guilt, and Macbeth knows that “all great Neptune’s ocean” cannot cleanse him, that there is enough blood on his hands to turn the entire sea red and this will stay with him until his death. He also realises that he is now in association with hell and pure evil;

“But wherefore could I not pronounce ‘Amen’? I had most need of blessing and ‘Amen’ stuck in my throat.”

Macbeth needed God’s blessing the most due to the austere sin he has violated but he is terror stricken by his inability to say ‘Amen’. He is now conscious of how his ambition has driven him too far and forced him to do something he knew was wrong all the while. He wasn’t content with the perfectly good life he had before and has now ruined it because he will forevermore be full of penitence.

Macbeth’s remorse and penitence briskly change to tremendous paranoia and ruthlessness. It is, once again, the ambition which has caused Macbeth to be stripped of his male bravado and revealed to be paranoid and frightful:

“Then comes my fit again. I had else been perfect, whole as the marble, founded as the rock, as broad and general as the casing air. But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears.”

Macbeth admits that he is currently tangled up with doubts and fears and everything would be perfectly intact without them. His ambitious desires and aspirations to keep his wrongly claimed throne have caused him to murder those he was once loyal to.

“I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

Since Macbeth’s ambition has caused him to cross major lines, he will never turn back and he will kill anyone who stands in his way. Even though he knows he can never forgive himself for his selfish deeds, he decides that now he has the power his ambition craved, he must do everything in his ability to keep it.

While Macbeth is continuing to slaughter those who pose a possible threat to him, the people of his country grow to loathe him. Macbeth’s ambition has gained him a defeated victory because even though he has everything he wanted, he also has everything he didn’t want – his own people seeing him as a blight in Scotland:

“O nation miserable! With an untitled tyrant, bloody-sceptred.”

Macduff is horrified that Scotland has become such a ‘miserable’ place now that a Macbeth, a betraying dictator, is in control. Macbeth is described as ‘bloody-sceptred’ because he has the title of king by shedding blood and is only kept in power through murder, which is why he is ‘untitled’.

 “Or so much as it needs, to dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds.”

This quote shows that Macbeth is the evil villain and Malcolm is the hero because the soldiers are saying that they will give as much blood as they have to, in order to get rid of Macbeth. Macbeth, who was once the war hero of Scotland, is now compared to a weed which is killing the flowers of Scotland. He was a highly respected man but his wicked ambition led him to want more, now he has less respect than ever before.

At the peak of the play, tyrant Macbeth begins to understand that his chaotic ambition took him nowhere; he becomes pessimistic, downhearted and resigned from life:

“I have lived long enough. My way of life is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf, and that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have.”

Macbeth seems to think he has lived long enough and he compares his life to a yellowing leaf in Autumn; withering and falling away. He also admits that he doesn’t own any of the things any other man should have in old age, such as love, honour and many good friends; he has given up on these.

“Better be with the dead, whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy.”

Macbeth would rather be dead than having to endure the endless metal torture and lack of sleep. He has grown tired of life and envies the dead as they can no longer be tormented. He realises that all the sinful deeds his crazy ambition drove him to commit were meaningless as his power is impotent. The ambition he always had was easily fuelled by the ambiguous prophecies of the deceiving witches.

In conclusion, the adversity “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare renders the downfall of a glorified, respected man who is brought down by his vicious ambition in six stages. At first, Macbeth maintains control and channels his ambition into helping those he is loyal to but after hearing what could be, he yearns for more. Once he takes drastic measures to try and reach his goals, he is plagued by regret and knows he has been forever damned for his actions. Macbeth’s ambition leads him to secure his power; he overlooks his guilt and focuses on doing whatever it takes to hold onto his authority. Eventually, the people of his wrongly claimed country learn of his maliciousness and see him as blight in Scotland. Due to the stress his ambition has caused him, Macbeth becomes resigned and fatalistic; he grows tired of life. He understands that he has been tricked by the three witches and simply doesn’t want to live anymore because he knows his ambition caused him to break all bonds of loyalty and trust. Shakespeare brilliantly demonstrates, in a variety of techniques, how just ambition alone can bring down the even the greatest of men.

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• Word Count 1529
• Page Count 3
• Subject English

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Back to: Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Ambition fills a man with eagerness. Once it is discovered in one’s mind, it demands to be acted upon. Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a tale of the fight between men’s instinct and their love for hierarchical order.

The play portrays various levels and dimensions of ambition through its major characters. Shakespeare loves social stability. In this play, we notice the consequences of sheltering uncontrolled ambition. The realisations of Macbeth teach us the role of ambition in life.

The witches plant the driving force of the plot in the mind of Macbeth . The ambition which gets into him is actually a discovery of his self-knowledge. Here we can see, how the same lure set by the witches start different kinds of thoughts in different characters. 

While Macbeth divides himself between his conscience and his much darker side, Lady Macbeth sets herself on the path to break into a world of men without knowing how to do it. 

When an obsessively ambitious person is busy in progress, he remains less dangerous. Every time the progress of ambition is presented in the play, violence happens. In a political climate, we get to see minds revealing themselves at the mercy of ambition.

Lady Macbeth and the witches are only the dim reminders to Macbeth, it is his own obsession with the power which drives his downfall . Macbeth used to be a loyal person, fighting for his own country. Duncan, King of Scotland, appointed him as the Thane of Cawdor.

Macbeth’s life could have been an example of honour and royalty sanctioned by society but he is a deeply ambitious person with a relentless pursuit of power. He realises what is right but he is a slave to his darker side.

His darker side is constantly fuelled by Lady Macbeth and the witches. The ambition set against the time-honoured principles takes away any hint of hope from this tragic text.

Lady Macbeth’s ambition to become a queen makes her wish for crossing all boundaries. She detests her feminine qualities which stops her from stepping upon a path normally allowed to a man in such a society. Her ambition channels through the actions of Macbeth.

Here we see, how ambition spreads its branches across individuals. Ambition makes her ruthless. With acute clarity, she brings Macbeth out of the moral dilemma and conspires him into darker deeds. She is caught in a conflict of “ unsex ”ing herself.

Somehow unconsciously, her ambition is also to break away from the domination of any man. In the play, we also see instances of stabilising ambition inspired by a sense of revenge in Macduff and Malcolm .

They aim for re-establishing the earlier order. The role of ambition in this play secretly shows us a society where old norms are being broken apart. It is best summed in this dialogue of the character called Ross, “ gainst Nature still! Thriftless ambition still ravin up thine own lives’ means! Then tis’ most like the Sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth. ” ( Act 2, Scene 4)

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GCSE Macbeth thesis and model paragraph - Macbeth's ambition

Subject: English

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

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A model thesis and first paragraph for the question: How does Shakespeare present Macbeth’s ambition? Topic sentence for second and third paragraphs and room for writing a We Do model, followed by students’ independent paragraph. I Do We Do You Do structure applied to essay. Great for introducing essay writing or feedback after assessment.

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A bundle is a package of resources grouped together to teach a particular topic, or a series of lessons, in one place.

Macbeth teaching bundle

Bundle contains: Knowledge organiser PowerPoint and resources Scheme of work covering one term Three example essay responses Academic non-fiction task booklet Two literacy tasks linked to Writing Revolution

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