Ambition

Ambition becomes destructive when it overrules conscience

Ambition is a desire to achieve something. Shakespeare’s Macbeth explores what happens when the desire for advancement becomes more important than loyalty, kindness and moral judgement. Macbeth gains the crown, but the pursuit of it destroys much of what could make success worthwhile: peace, friendship, love and eventually life itself.

This is not simply a story in which wanting to succeed is wrong. At the beginning, Duncan rewards Macbeth’s service with the title Thane of Cawdor. Honourable advancement is possible. The crucial distinction is between earning recognition and pursuing a position through murder. Ambition drives the action; guilt and fear reveal its costs; kingship concerns how the resulting power is used.

The prophecy opens a possibility, but Macbeth imagines murder

In Act 1 Scene 2, Macbeth is praised for fighting rebels on Duncan’s behalf. Structurally, this establishes the loyal soldier against whom the later murderer can be measured. His violence initially protects the king; eventually it serves his own interests.

The witches predict that Macbeth will become king in Act 1 Scene 3, but they do not tell him to kill Duncan. Banquo notices his reaction and asks, “Good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear / Things that do sound so fair?” To “start” is to make a sudden movement in surprise or alarm. Macbeth’s fear at apparently welcome news can suggest that the prophecy touches a dangerous desire he already possesses.

Macbeth’s aside then refers to “My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical”. Here, “fantastical” means imagined: murder is already entering his thoughts before Lady Macbeth urges him towards it.

Nevertheless, Macbeth also considers waiting: “If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, / Without my stir.” This creates a real alternative to violence. One interpretation is that the witches awaken an existing desire; another is that their prophecy dangerously reshapes his expectations. Either way, their influence does not remove his responsibility for choosing how to respond.

When Duncan names Malcolm his heir in Act 1 Scene 4, Macbeth begins to see another person as an obstacle. In an aside, he commands, “Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires:”.

The contrast between light and darkness gives his ambition a moral meaning. “Black” suggests that Macbeth recognises his desires as evil, while “deep” suggests something concealed within him. The imperative “hide” reveals a wish to escape scrutiny rather than abandon the desire. The aside also separates his outward loyalty from the intentions known to the audience.

Lady Macbeth turns ambition into pressure to act

Lady Macbeth’s first appearance in Act 1 Scene 5 centres on Macbeth’s letter about the prophecy. Unlike the early reports of his military service, her introduction immediately foregrounds their future greatness.

In her soliloquy, she judges him “Art not without ambition, but without / The illness should attend it”. “Illness” here suggests wickedness: she treats the willingness to do evil as something ambition requires. Her description of his “milk of human kindness” makes compassion an obstacle to obtaining the crown quickly.

Her command “unsex me here” asks the spirits to remove qualities she associates with feminine tenderness and replace them with cruelty. This connects ambition to gender expectations. In a patriarchal society, wives were generally expected to obey their husbands; Lady Macbeth instead directs Macbeth and challenges his courage. Her behaviour could unsettle contemporary spectators, but Shakespeare also exposes how destructive an equation of masculinity with violence can be.

In Act 1 Scene 7, Macbeth initially refuses to proceed. Lady Macbeth responds, “When you durst do it, then you were a man”. She makes murder a test of manhood and commitment. She is therefore a powerful catalyst, but she does not create all his ambition: he has already imagined murder and concealed his desires.

Macbeth predicts the fall caused by his own ambition

Before Lady Macbeth enters in Act 1 Scene 7, Macbeth weighs the murder in a soliloquy. He recognises his obligations as Duncan’s relative, subject and host, and acknowledges Duncan’s goodness. His reasoning shows that he understands the wrongness of the act.

He finally identifies his motive:

“I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself / And falls on the other.”

The imagery draws on horsemanship. A spur urges movement, while “vaulting” suggests an excessive leap that ends in a fall. Ambition is not presented as a secure route upwards: its own excess makes it self-defeating. The verbs “o'erleaps” and “falls” compress Macbeth’s eventual rise and destruction into one image, foreshadowing the tragedy.

“And falls on the other.” is a short, broken-off verse line. The expected completion of the image is left unstated, and Lady Macbeth enters immediately afterwards. In performance, this can make his private reflection feel abruptly displaced by her pressure. It also leaves the idea of falling hanging over the decision that follows.

Banquo shows that temptation can be resisted

Banquo is a foil to Macbeth because he also hears a prophecy promising greatness to his family. In Act 2 Scene 1, he appeals to “merciful powers”: “Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature / Gives way to in repose!”.

“Restrain” suggests an effort to control troubling thoughts, while “cursed” recognises their moral danger. Whereas Macbeth asks darkness to conceal desire, Banquo asks for help resisting temptation. He also insists that any advancement must preserve his honour and loyalty.

Banquo is not wholly free from ambition. Alone in Act 3 Scene 1, he wonders, “May they not be my oracles as well, / And set me up in hope?” The question shows that Macbeth’s success makes the witches’ promise attractive to him too. “Oracles” gives their words the authority of prophetic guidance.

This complicates the contrast. Banquo can be read as morally stronger because he does not murder to fulfil his hopes. Alternatively, his private hope is troubling because he suspects Macbeth has acted foully: “Thou play'dst most foully for't”. Despite that suspicion, he still finds the prophecy tempting. The stronger conclusion is not that Banquo lacks ambition, but that shared temptation leads to different choices.

Keeping the crown creates an escalating cycle of violence

Once Macbeth becomes king, ambition changes from gaining the crown to securing it and controlling the future. He arranges the murder of Banquo and Fleance because the prophecy about Banquo’s descendants threatens his hopes. Banquo dies, but Fleance escapes: further violence still fails to deliver certainty.

After Banquo’s ghost disrupts the banquet in Act 3 Scene 4, Macbeth declares:

“I am in blood / Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er:”

The metaphor imagines blood as a river through which he is wading. It turns individual murders into an engulfing condition. Macbeth represents further killing as no harder than turning back, using past wrongdoing to justify future wrongdoing.

He then says that his plans must be carried out before they can be examined: “Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.” “Scann'd” means examined or considered. This reverses the lengthy moral debate of Act 1 Scene 7: he now wants action before thought can restrain him. In Act 4 Scene 1, he orders the slaughter of Macduff’s family. His private desire for security causes suffering far beyond himself.

Ambition as pride against a divinely ordered world

Macbeth was probably written around 1606, during the reign of James I. Ideas of a God-given hierarchy, often associated with the Great Chain of Being, made the violent seizure of a rightful king’s position especially disturbing. Macbeth’s regicide can therefore be interpreted as an attempt to overturn an order larger than himself.

In Act 4 Scene 3, Malcolm tells Macduff, “Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell”. The allusion is to Lucifer, the fallen angel associated with pride and rebellion against God. In this conversation, Malcolm is explaining that one apparently good figure’s corruption does not make all goodness false.

Applied to Macbeth’s trajectory, the allusion suggests a movement from distinction to degradation through pride. His confidence that the witches’ later promises make him safe can be read as hubris. However, Duncan’s earlier reward of Macbeth shows why this should not become a claim that all advancement is sinful: the play particularly condemns ambition that oversteps moral boundaries.

Success ends in guilt, emptiness and death

Lady Macbeth recognises the failure of their success while alone in Act 3 Scene 2: “Nought's had, all's spent, / Where our desire is got without content:”. The opposition between “Nought” and “all” makes gaining the crown sound like losing everything. They have obtained their desire without the happiness they expected.

By Act 5 Scene 1, she compulsively rubs her hands and cries “Out, damned spot!” The imagined blood makes guilt visible on stage. Her fragmented prose contrasts with her earlier forceful verse, suggesting that the control she once exerted over speech, plans and others has broken down. Her death is announced later; at the end Malcolm reports that she is thought to have taken her own life.

After hearing of her death in Act 5 Scene 5, Macbeth says, “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day”.

The repetition makes time seem monotonous, while “Creeps” replaces the energetic upward movement of “Vaulting ambition” with weary slowness. His image of life as a “poor player” who “struts and frets” reduces apparent greatness to a brief performance. Ambition has not given his life lasting meaning. This is Macbeth’s despairing judgement, rather than a truth every character shares: others still act in hope of restoring Scotland.

Yet the ending is not entirely passive. In Act 5 Scene 8, after learning how the prophecy has deceived him, Macbeth challenges his opponent: “Lay on, Macduff”. This can suggest a final return of the soldier’s courage. It can also suggest continuing pride: he refuses surrender and humiliation even when his hopes have collapsed. His bravery complicates our response without cancelling his responsibility. Macduff kills him, completing the fall Macbeth anticipated in Act 1.

Using a quotation in an essay

A useful paragraph moves from an argument to close analysis, then explains how the moment contributes to the play’s wider meaning. Context strengthens the argument when it helps explain the particular words or action being discussed.

Shakespeare presents Macbeth’s ambition as dangerously self-defeating because Macbeth understands its consequences but still allows it to overcome his duties. In his Act 1 Scene 7 soliloquy, “only” isolates ambition as his motive after he has acknowledged his obligations to Duncan. The metaphor of “Vaulting ambition” turns the hoped-for rise into a movement that “falls”, foreshadowing his destruction. For spectators who believed in a divinely ordered hierarchy, seizing a rightful king’s position through murder would make this overreaching spiritually as well as politically dangerous. Although Lady Macbeth subsequently persuades him to act, Macbeth’s private speech shows that he already recognises both his desire and its danger. His later insistence in Act 3 Scene 4 that plans “must be acted ere they may be scann'd” reveals a disturbing change: ambition teaches him to suppress the judgement that might prevent further violence.

Central argument

Unchecked ambition overrides conscience. Macbeth gains the crown but loses security, relationships and meaning. Honourable advancement contrasts with advancement through murder.

Follow the change

• Act 1 Scene 3: Macbeth imagines murder before Lady Macbeth’s intervention. Banquo notices his fearful reaction to the prophecy.
• Act 1 Scene 4: “Stars, hide your fires” reveals conscious concealment.
• Act 1 Scene 7: “Vaulting ambition” ends in a fall. The short, unfinished image precedes Lady Macbeth’s entrance and pressure.
• Act 3 Scene 4: “I am in blood” justifies continuing violence; “Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd” rejects deliberation.
• Act 5 Scene 1: Lady Macbeth’s imagined blood and fragmented prose reveal collapse.
• Act 5 Scene 5: repeated “To-morrow” expresses emptiness; “Creeps” contrasts with earlier “Vaulting”.
• Act 5 Scene 8: “Lay on, Macduff” suggests courage or continuing pride.