Lady Macbeth's Ambition

Heraclitus once said,“big results require big ambitions.” The idea that being unrealistically ambitious can have tragic consequences shines brightly throughout the short tragedy Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare. To help develop this idea to his audience, Shakespeare uses the characters Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, whose ambition is so strong that it ends up leading to their downfall. Macbeth’s soliloquy in Act One about murdering his cousin King Duncan and Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy about wanting to lose her femininity. These acts lead them losing their minds, emotions and respect from and for others and changes them in a way that they become unrecognisable and the furthest things from themselves. Prophecies are what lead Macbeth to have

From very early on this is shown to the audience in her soliloquy, where calls upon spirits to “tend on mortal thoughts” and to “unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe topfull of direst cruelty.” She wants her feminine instinct to care, to be taken away from her so she will be able to be, and do evil deeds. She wants to, “stop up the access and passage to remorse” so she won’t feel guilty when killing King Duncan to gain a royal status. It is very clear from early that Lady Macbeth seems to be stronger and more ruthless out of her and her husband, as she persistently urges Macbeth to kill King Duncan and take the crown, showing her determination for her husband to become King of Scotland. At the times when she talks about doing evil deeds to take the thrown, she never mentions herself as becoming Queen, only Macbeth becoming King. This is because she knows that if she convinces and persuades Macbeth enough that he will become King and gain all this power and status for himself, rather than saying that they will gain this together, he will be more likely to do the deeds required to achieve that ambition. As there is more glory and reward in taking all that power and status for yourself, compared to having to share it with

In Macbeth, this balance is created by Lady Macbeth and Macbeth’s tragic consequences and demise that stemmed from their ambition. After all they had done to gain the titles and statuses, King and Queen of Scotland, that they lusted for, it ended up changing them completely. It changed them in a way the audience wouldn’t be able to recognise them. Macbeth became so consumed by his newfound power, as he was King and no one could tell him what to do, that he lost his humanity, mind, emotions and the sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. His loss of emotions was amplified with the death of his wife Lady Macbeth. Once he says, “she would of died hereafter”, it shows that at some point, from becoming King, he had lost his love for her and no longer cared about her as when she dies he doesn’t express any sadness or grief, he expresses no emotion at all. The atrocities that Lady Macbeth took part in affected her to the point where she lost her mind. She could not handle the intense guilt that she felt from taking part in the murders that it tore her apart mentally. She started to sleep talk and would confess of all the wrong-doings and murders her and her husband had committed, “yet here’s a spot.’ ‘Out, damned spot!’ ‘The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?.” From the beginning it was known that Lady Macbeth was a crazy women, and by the end, her craziness turned into a mental