How Does William Shakespeare Use His Play Macbeth to Explore the Theme of Ambition?

William Shakespeare perfectly explores the theme of ambition by twisting the characters of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth from their greed of higher status. In his play, he creates a nation led to its demise by a greedy king.

Macbeth was sought to be a loyal and courageous soldier at the beginning of the play of Macbeth. However, his ambition to steal the king’s throne over-powered his dignity. He was then stripped from his integrity. Macbeth’s ambition lacked morality and ambition without morality can create a monster. Macbeth talks about murdering Duncan to become king by saying, “I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other”. Using a metaphor Macbeth compares the only thing motivating him to commit the crime of murdering King Duncan, which is ambition, to a horse leaping over an obstacle. A horse overcomes an obstacle not realising its consequences or not thinking ahead. In a race, a horse is not worried about what will happen after jumping over the hurdle. What matters to it, at the moment, is to overcome it. If the horse starts to worry about what might happen if it jumps over the hurdle, it will never be able to run at all. Macbeth is determined and has a fixed intention on becoming king where he can only draw on his devoting and vaulting ambition to reach that higher power. Macbeth’s aspiration and thirst for power allows himself to become blind-sided of the consequences resulted from the murder like a horse leaping on an obstacle where they both land into the unknown outcome. He lost his sense of righteousness through uncontrolled ambition which led to his own self-destruction where all chaos let loose. Just like the horse in a race, he did not want to think about the consequences because what mattered to him was to gain the throne. Therefore, he committed sinful deeds and did not pay attention to the immorality. The disorder and the disruption of the great chain of being that Macbeth caused is what stirred the plot of Macbeth together. Without Macbeth’s driven force of ambition, William Shakespeare’s play of Macbeth wouldn’t have even existed.

 Lady Macbeth is a character portrayed as a manipulative character with a thirst for power. She has a strong will to achieve power which makes her do any humanly possible thing to fulfil her goals which include the action of manipulating her husband to commit murder. Lady Macbeth says, “Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it”. She uses a metaphor to express to Macbeth that he should be disguised as sweet and innocent like a flower but his true nature to be evil and cruel similar to a snake. This quote unveils Lady Macbeth’s true intentions and shows that Lady Macbeth is very power-hungry where she will go to extreme measures in order to gain power. Lady Macbeth is very masculine and reckless in which she uses her ambition in sly ways that she could be even be recognised as a villain. As soon as the opportunity to gain power arose she immediately had a plan in mind. In accordance with the quote, Lady Macbeth appears innocent only on the surface. However, she is evil underneath it and she does not let anyone doubt her because she always stays in the background. Whenever she gets an opportunity, she influences the king by whispering into his ear and that is what makes her so dangerous. She is more cunning than Macbeth because he is like a wall in front of her. People will only see Macbeth doing evil things but in reality, she is the one to influence his thinking. Lady Macbeth’s ambition is the trigger to Macbeth’s madness and she is the stimulator and the supporter of Macbeth’s insanity and the sins that he commits.

In conclusion Lady Macbeth and Macbeth both use their ambition for the same goal which is the desire for power. Their over-whelming ambition overtook their humanity and morality resulting in dangerous consequences where they both end up suffering. 

Who or What Do You Feel is Responsible for the Downfall of Scotland in the Play?

 Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are characters within the play of Macbeth who are responsible for the downfall of Scotland due to their sinful manipulations.

 Macbeth is a ruthless character who has carried out sinful deeds that lead to the chaos within Scotland. Macbeth took on the responsibility of being the leader of a country and he failed. He murdered all those who could have stood in his way. It clearly indicates that he was not fit to run the kingdom. Macduff describes Macbeth by saying “His tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues, was once thought honest”. A hyperbole is used to portray the man Macbeth had become. They seemed exaggerate his name and believed him to be quite honourable. But now, they have turned against him and they don’t even want to say his name. He allowed himself as a king who is the protector of their kingdom to let Scotland turn to ruins. Rather than being a true king, he thrived for his own benefits and this was one of the major reasons why his kingdom fell. He removed all morals and ethics and whatever sanity he had left of him to then becoming a ruler of tyranny. This quote shows that not only has Macbeth become the enemy of others, but he is his own worst enemy. When he forgot his own morals, he had become insensible with his decisions being incoherent. He didn’t even know that he was gradually moving towards his own demise. After all, he was not thinking about safeguarding his people but how he could attain more. His inability to protect Scotland led to its downfall and his own downfall.

Lady Macbeth is a character who used different ways and twisted encouragements to create Macbeth into the king he became. Lady Macbeth persuaded and tricked her husband into committing deeds that would ignite a sense of greed and desire for more power. Lady Macbeth says to Macbeth, “Was the hope drunk? And wakes it now, to look so green and pale”. Using a metaphor, she compares her husband’s original strong hope for the throne to being drunk in a sense of a weakness and conflicted feelings. Lady Macbeth manipulates Macbeth by questioning his masculinity and hinting that he is a coward that can’t make up his mind. In this scene this quote becomes the trigger point that resolves Macbeth’s ambivalence to commit murder. If Lady Macbeth didn’t try and convince Macbeth, he wouldn’t have had the courage and wouldn’t have had enough ambition to take over the throne but because his own wife is very supportive and encouraging of his immoral decisions he murdered King Duncan which was the first event leading to Scotland’s downfall. On one hand, it appears that Lady Macbeth was indirectly responsible while on the other hand, it is also apparent that Macbeth was quite weak in terms of faith and moral. If he wanted, he could have seen the wrong in what he was doing but he was too deluded to see it.

 All in all, Macbeth was responsible for the downfall of Scotland by physically committing simultaneous murders that lead to the destruction of the kingdom and Lady Macbeth was also responsible by manipulating Macbeth into performing those actions.