Why Is Ambition Important In Macbeth

There are many influences in The Tragedy of Macbeth Including; the witches, Lady Macbeth and fate itself. The true culprit, however, is a beast that lays inside each mind on Earth, it can be implemented for good or it can take control and raze your world. Ambition is its name. In the play The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, almost every major event is due to someone’s ambition, most often Macbeth’s. Those events are, King Duncan’s murder, Macbeth becoming king, Banquo’s murder, the murders of Macduff’s family, then lastly, the attack on Dunsinane resulting in Macbeth’s death.

The events in the play are set in motion because of ambition, although it is Lady Macbeth’s that started the downward slope for herself and her husband. She

begins with planning to murder the King, telling Macbeth,“Will I with wine wassail so convince that memory, the warder of the brain, shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason a limbeck only. When in swineish sleep their drenched nature lie as in a death, what cannot you and I preform upon th’ unguarded Duncan? What not put upon his spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt of our great quell” (I.vii.64 – 72). Lady Macbeth plans to kill Duncan and caries out the plan because she wants the power that would come with being the Queen and she knows if Duncan is dead then Macbeth will take the throne. Further evidence of Lady Macbeth’s push for power can be seen after Macbeth has spoken with the witches the first time, he explains to Banquo,“If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me without my stir” (I.iii.141 – 143). Macbeth means here is he will not try to become king, but if he does, he won’t question it, at this point he has no ambition to be king.
Once Macbeth has accepted that he wants to be king his ambition only gets him into more trouble.

The first example can be found as he is killing the king exclaiming, “I go, and it is done. The bell invites me. Here it not, Duncan, for it is a knell that summons the to heaven or to hell” (II.i.61 – 63). Here Macbeth has accepted that he is going to kill the king and now feels driven to do so because, just like his wife, he wants that power. The second example is when he goes to the witches the second time begging, “Even till destruction sicken, answer me to what I ask you” (IV.i.50 – 61). This is another example of ambition because, Macbeth wants to know more about the future to be prepared when he is attacked to be able to keep his power. However, Macbeth misunderstands and believes he cannot be killed and becomes cocky leading to his own

death.
Another argument could be made that the driving force is Lad Macbeth herself.

Evidence can be shown from when she is trying to get Macbeth to kill the king saying, “What beast was’t then that made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man; and to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man. Nor time nor place did adhere, and yet you would make both. They have made themselves, and that their fitness now does unmake you” (I.vii.47-54). The argument could be made that Lady Macbeth is forcing her husband to kill Duncan, that is not entirely true. Lady Macbeth is being driven by her ambition and therefore forcing her husband to follow. It is easy to see That she is not the driving force in the fifth act when Macbeth says, “She should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day” (V.v.17 – 20). Macbeth was not being driven by his wife or he would have tried to stop the fight or wished she had died sooner so it did not come to this. Macbeth was a good man at the start of the play. Now he says “if only she died when we could mourn her. He is now so focused on power that he does not stop to think about his wife being dead.

To restate, the most powerful influence is psychological, it is ambition. Every major event happens because of someone’s ambition, the play was started and advanced because of ambition. The definition of ambition is

desire and determination to achieve success. That is what the characters of this paly show and they achieve it; becoming king, solidifying a rule, and killing Macbeth. His ambition is miniscule in the beginning however, by the end Macbeth has been consumed by it and is not able to stop, even if he tried.