Eng 12 - the Danger of Ambition

Lauren Smith

Mrs. K

Honors English 12

16 March 2017

The Danger of Ambition

Macbeth is a famous play by William Shakespeare known for its violence. The story begins as one of a loyal and honorable hero of Scotland. However, Macbeth's character changes gradually during the play. A powerful ambition for power caused him to make sinister decisions that created for him only despair, guilt, and madness. At the end of the play he was no longer honorable and, instead, a tyrant. Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and the three witches are all to blame for the disintegration of the kingdom. Lady Macbeth through convincing Macbeth, Macbeth for following the ambition more than his conscience and the three witches for putting the idea of being king in Macbeth’s head.

Lady Macbeth is to blame for the tragedy because she convinces and manipulates Macbeth into killing Duncan. She convinces and she manipulates him “through a meticulous process of cruel and piercing emasculation, purposefully designed to attack his warrior status, an identity of utmost importance in his medieval and brutish realm (Thompson and Francesco)” by deriding him for being "too full o'th' milk of human kindness" (Macbeth 1.5.17), which Macbeth takes great insult in and telling him she would have “dashed the brains out” (Macbeth 1.7.59) of her own newborn if he asked. Lady Macbeth does all of this because of her greed for power. She knows that she has the ability to control Macbeth and Macbeth being king would allow her to have control over the king and be queen herself. This shows that without Lady Macbeth, Macbeth wouldn’t have killed Duncan and there wouldn’t have been a tragedy.

Macbeth is also to blame for the disintegration of the kingdom because without him being so ambitious and narrow sighted, the play wouldn’t have turned out the way it did. What is emphatically to be noticed is that the weyard sisters do not suggest Duncan's murder; they simply make a prediction, and Macbeth himself takes the matter from there (Mack). Macbeth was having concerns for killing Duncan and at one point even said, “Proceed no further in this business” (Macbeth 1.7.31), but his ambition gets the best of him. Macbeth declares, “If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,

Without my stir” (Macbeth 1.3.142-143).

Macbeth is to blame for what happens after he kills Duncan because without him seeing the ghost of Banquo and shouting it out and without him overreacting at Duncan’s death, there would have been little suspicion of his involvement in the murder. Without Macbeth’s ambition and conscience, the play wouldn’t have taken the path it did.

Without the three witches intervention,