Ambition

Ambition: wanting greatness at a destructive cost

Ambition is a strong desire to achieve something. In Macbeth, Shakespeare explores what happens when the desire for greatness overrides moral responsibility. Macbeth begins as a respected soldier whose service earns him honour. He ends as a hated ruler, isolated from the friendship and love that could have made success worthwhile. Lady Macbeth also achieves the royal status she desires, but cannot escape the psychological consequences of obtaining it through murder.

Ambition connects with several other themes without being identical to them. Power is what Macbeth wants; ambition drives him towards it. Guilt follows his crimes, while fear helps drive the violence through which he tries to protect his achievement. The tragedy therefore explores both the pursuit of success and the inability to feel satisfied once it has been achieved.

The first temptation: prophecy becomes a possibility

In Act 1 Scene 3, the witches predict that Macbeth will become king. When he learns that he has also become Thane of Cawdor, their accurate prediction makes the promise of kingship seem credible. His private thoughts immediately turn towards murder, although the witches have not instructed him to kill Duncan.

However, Macbeth also considers waiting: in an aside, he says, “If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, / Without my stir.” Shakespeare establishes an alternative to violence before Macbeth chooses it. The prophecy tempts him, but it does not remove his responsibility for interpreting and acting upon it.

In Act 1 Scene 4, Duncan names Malcolm as his successor. Macbeth now sees Malcolm as an obstacle. In another aside, Macbeth declares, “The Prince of Cumberland! that is a step / On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,”. He imagines succession as something blocking his upward movement: he must either accept defeat or leap beyond his position. The alternatives of leaping and falling anticipate his later description of ambition destroying itself.

Macbeth continues, “Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires:”. The imperative “hide” suggests that Macbeth already recognises his wishes as shameful. Darkness offers concealment, while “black” associates his ambition with moral corruption.

The stars can represent heavenly judgement, making the request an attempt to hide sinful desires from divine scrutiny. Alternatively, the darkness can express his wish to conceal his intentions from people around him—and even avoid confronting them himself. These readings reinforce one another: ambition creates a division between his outward loyalty and inward desire. Because the speech is an aside, the audience knows what Duncan does not, creating dramatic irony.

Lady Macbeth imagines greatness before it arrives

In Act 1 Scene 5, Lady Macbeth reads Macbeth's letter about the prophecies. The letter is prose, conveying a private communication between husband and wife; her subsequent verse speech reveals how intensely she begins to shape their future. Reflecting on the absent Macbeth, she addresses him in her speech: “Art not without ambition, but without / The illness should attend it”. She recognises his ambition but treats the cruelty needed to seize power as a quality he lacks.

Her own desire is equally intense. When Macbeth arrives, she tells him, “Thy letters have transported me beyond / This ignorant present, and I feel now / The future in the instant.” She mentally inhabits their promised greatness before they have achieved it. The enjambment carries her thought beyond “beyond”, suggesting the momentum of her excitement. Her impatience with the present helps explain why she embraces Duncan's arrival as an opportunity for murder.

Lady Macbeth does not create Macbeth's desire for kingship. Instead, she tries to remove the moral resistance that might prevent him from acting. Her appeal to spirits to suppress remorse shows that she, too, understands compassion as an obstacle to their plan. Through her husband's advancement, she seeks royal status and the power they will share.

In Act 1 Scene 7, Macbeth decides not to proceed with Duncan's murder. Lady Macbeth challenges his love and courage, declaring, “When you durst do it, then you were a man”. She makes murder appear to be a test of masculinity. Shakespeare connects ambition with Macbeth's vulnerability to humiliation: he wants the crown, but also wants to prove himself worthy in his wife's eyes. Her pressure matters, yet Macbeth finally chooses to commit the crime.

“Vaulting ambition”: Macbeth predicts his own fall

Before Lady Macbeth enters in Act 1 Scene 7, Macbeth's soliloquy weighs the reasons against murder. Duncan is his king, relative and guest; Macbeth owes him protection rather than violence. Macbeth also recognises Duncan's goodness and anticipates punishment. He concludes:

“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 riding metaphor presents ambition as a force that attempts too great a leap and causes a fall. A “spur” would urge a horse forwards, but Macbeth has no justifiable motive: “only” isolates ambition as his reason. The image makes excessive striving self-defeating. Macbeth can imagine the danger accurately, yet still chooses the action that will bring it about.

This develops the imagery of Act 1 Scene 4. There, Macbeth imagines that he can “o'erleap” Malcolm; here, ambition “o'erleaps itself”. What first seemed a way to overcome an external obstacle becomes the cause of his own destruction.

Macbeth speaks in blank verse, but the thought moves through the line endings rather than remaining neatly contained. Enjambment carries the audience from the upward movement of “Vaulting” towards “falls”. The final phrase, “And falls on the other”, leaves the expected completion—side—unstated, giving the image a broken-off quality. Lady Macbeth enters immediately afterwards, ending his private reflection. The warning remains clear: reaching too far can destroy the person who strives.

Ambition can therefore be understood as Macbeth's tragic flaw, or hamartia. Yet his ability to recognise the danger makes his downfall more than a simple mistake. Shakespeare presents someone who understands moral limits and deliberately crosses them.

Banquo: temptation does not have to lead to murder

Banquo provides a foil to Macbeth because both men hear promising prophecies, but respond differently. In Act 2 Scene 1, Banquo prays, “Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature / Gives way to in repose!”. “Restrain” shows a desire to resist troubling thoughts rather than turn them into action. Unlike Macbeth's request for darkness to hide desire, Banquo's prayer asks higher powers for moral help.

Nevertheless, Banquo is not entirely untouched by ambition. After Macbeth becomes king, Banquo asks himself in his Act 3 Scene 1 soliloquy, “May they not be my oracles as well, / And set me up in hope?”. An oracle gives prophetic guidance: Banquo wonders whether the witches' predictions will also benefit him through a line of royal descendants.

One reading emphasises his honour: he feels temptation but does not murder to fulfil it. Another sees a more compromised figure, since hope for his descendants exists alongside his suspicion that Macbeth gained the crown dishonestly. He suspects wrongdoing but continues to serve Macbeth rather than openly challenging him. The stronger distinction is therefore not that Macbeth has ambition and Banquo has none, but that Macbeth acts violently upon it. Banquo's response makes Macbeth's choices look avoidable rather than inevitable.

Gaining the crown creates further violence

Macbeth's ambition changes after Duncan's murder. He now wants to secure the power he has gained and prevent Banquo's descendants from inheriting it. He arranges the murder of Banquo and Fleance without fully involving Lady Macbeth. Banquo dies, but Fleance escapes; ambition has destroyed a friendship without giving Macbeth lasting security.

After the disastrous banquet in Act 3 Scene 4, Macbeth says, “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 his crimes as a river of blood. He presents turning back as equally arduous as continuing across: “as tedious as” makes the two routes seem equally difficult. He uses this supposed equal difficulty to justify continuing his crimes, converting past wrongdoing into an excuse for more.

He then declares, “Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.” Here, “scann'd” means examined or considered. This reverses his earlier behaviour: before killing Duncan, he carefully debated consequences; now he intends to act before thought can restrain him. In Act 4 Scene 1, he orders the slaughter of Macduff's family. His determination to preserve himself harms innocent people and helps create the revenge that ultimately destroys him.

Ambition as pride and a fall from goodness

In Act 4 Scene 3, Malcolm tells Macduff, “Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell;”. The biblical allusion recalls Lucifer, the exalted angel whose rebellion and pride led to his fall. Malcolm is discussing trust: Macbeth was once thought honest, but one person's corruption does not prove that everyone is corrupt. The repetition of “bright” links greatness with the possibility of a terrible fall.

Applied to ambition, the allusion also illuminates Macbeth's movement from honour to evil. His former greatness makes his fall more striking. For a Christian Jacobean audience, pride could mean refusing the limits imposed by God, not simply having a high opinion of oneself.

The Great Chain of Being imagined creation as a God-established hierarchy. Macbeth's violent attempt to rise above his position could therefore be understood as a disruption of divine order. Shakespeare makes that disruption costly: the crown brings neither peace nor fulfilment. This reading supports a warning against overreaching ambition, while Macbeth's private suffering also gives the warning a deeply human dimension.

The ending: achievement without meaning

Lady Macbeth recognises the emptiness of their success early. In Act 3 Scene 2, she says, “Nought's had, all's spent, / Where our desire is got without content:”. The contrast between “Nought” and “all” suggests that they have sacrificed everything for an achievement that gives them nothing emotionally. Her excitement about possessing the future in Act 1 has become disappointment with the reality of power.

By Act 5 Scene 1, her sleepwalking exposes the memories she cannot control. Her prose is fragmented by abrupt commands, questions and recollections, contrasting with the forceful verse of her earlier speeches. Ambition helped her suppress conscience temporarily, but royal power cannot command guilt to disappear. Her death is announced in Act 5 Scene 5; later, Malcolm reports that she is thought to have killed herself.

On hearing of her death, Macbeth says in Act 5 Scene 5, “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day”. The repetition makes time feel monotonous rather than purposeful. The alliteration of “petty pace” reinforces the slow, diminished movement. The man who once rushed towards a promised future now finds that future empty. His description of life as a “poor player” turns striving into a brief performance that ends in silence. This can suggest emotional numbness after repeated violence, or grief expressed through despair at life's meaninglessness.

Yet Macbeth's final response is not wholly passive. In Act 5 Scene 8, after recognising the witches' deception, he challenges his enemy: “Lay on, Macduff”. His defiance can suggest a return of the soldier's courage seen at the beginning: he fights even after his supposed protection has failed. Alternatively, it reveals continuing pride: he refuses submission because he cannot bear humiliation before Malcolm and the crowd. Both readings have evidence. His courage complicates the tragic ending, but his defeat still fulfils the earlier image of ambition rising too far and falling.

Turning evidence into an essay argument

Edexcel's Shakespeare question separates two kinds of response. Part (a) assesses close analysis of language, form and structure in the printed extract: AO2, worth 20 marks. Part (b) assesses an argument about the play elsewhere, supported by references and relevant context: AO1, worth 15 marks, and AO3, worth 5 marks. Context is not assessed in part (a), and close language analysis is not assessed in part (b).

For part (b), a useful argument follows a change: Macbeth's ambition begins as a temptation he could resist, becomes a deliberate rejection of conscience, and finally leaves him with power that cannot provide security or meaning. References should establish that development rather than become separate exercises in analysing words.

Worked paragraph — part (b), ambition elsewhere in the play: Shakespeare presents ambition as destructive because achieving greatness does not satisfy the Macbeths. In Act 1 Scene 5, Lady Macbeth tells her husband that his letters have “transported me beyond / This ignorant present”: she is already imagining the happiness and power their future will bring. She then helps organise Duncan's murder, treating conscience as something to overcome. For a Jacobean Christian audience, seeking advancement through regicide would challenge a God-established hierarchy, making their imagined success a dangerous rejection of moral limits. By Act 3 Scene 2, Lady Macbeth admits that “Nought's had, all's spent” because their fulfilled desire has brought no contentment. Her disappointment shows that gaining the crown has cost them peace rather than secured it. Shakespeare therefore makes ambition self-defeating: their willingness to sacrifice moral responsibility destroys the fulfilment they hoped greatness would provide.

This paragraph develops one claim through two acts, using references to establish a change and context to explain the significance of their choice. In a full part (b) answer, further paragraphs could develop Banquo's contrasting response and the final consequences for Macbeth.

Central argument

Ambition moves from wanting the crown to protecting it at any cost. Success brings fear, violence, isolation and emptiness rather than fulfilment.

Beginning: desire and choice

• Act 1 Scene 3, Macbeth: chance could crown him without action; murder is a choice.
• Act 1 Scene 4, Macbeth: “Stars, hide your fires” — shame and concealed desire. His wish to “o'erleap” Malcolm anticipates his fall.
• Act 1 Scene 5, Lady Macbeth: “transported me beyond / This ignorant present” — excitement about their imagined greatness.
• Act 1 Scene 7, Macbeth: “Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself / And falls on the other.” — he recognises ambition's self-destructive potential. Lady Macbeth pressures him, but he chooses murder.

Middle: restraint versus escalation

• Act 2 Scene 1, Banquo: “Restrain in me the cursed thoughts” — resistance to temptation.