Macbeth: Ambition and Power

Ambition is the force that drives Macbeth from start to finish. It is Macbeth's tragic flaw (the fatal weakness, or hamartia, that ruins a tragic hero), and Shakespeare makes it the theme through which the whole play works.

At the outset Macbeth has no plan to seize the throne. The witches' prophecy that he "shalt be king hereafter" wakes a "horrid image" in him, a thought of murder so disturbing it makes his "seated heart knock at [his] ribs". The desire is already inside him—the prophecy only gives it shape.

The clearest statement of the theme comes in his own soliloquy (a speech voicing private thoughts alone on stage) before the murder:

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

Here Shakespeare names the theme and predicts the outcome in one image. "Vaulting" compares ambition to a rider leaping onto a horse with so much force that he overshoots and falls off the far side. Ambition that overreaches destroys itself. Everything that follows in the play acts out this metaphor.

Macbeth's ambition alone is not enough to make him act; at the end of Act 1 he decides "We will proceed no further in this business". It is Lady Macbeth who turns thought into deed.

She attacks his manhood, asking whether he was "afeard / To be the same in thine own act and valour / As thou art in desire", making cowardice and ambition into a test of masculinity. She reframes murder as the proof of love and courage, so that not killing Duncan becomes shameful.

Lady Macbeth's method	Effect on Macbeth's ambition
Questions his manhood ("When you durst do it, then you were a man")	Turns hesitation into weakness he must overcome
Plans the murder in detail	Removes the practical obstacles blocking his desire
Dismisses his conscience ("A little water clears us of this deed")	Silences the moral doubt holding him back

This matters for AO1: ambition in the play is shared, not solitary. The Macbeths are, for a time, "partners of greatness". The tragedy is set in motion by two people pushing each other past the point of no return.

Shakespeare charts ambition as a corrupting force by showing how far it changes Macbeth. He begins as "brave Macbeth", "valour's minion", a hero who has just saved Scotland. By the end he is a "tyrant", a "hell-hound", a "dead butcher".

The turning point is the murder of Duncan, but the corruption deepens after it. Ambition mutates into paranoia:

• He has Banquo murdered because the witches promised Banquo's descendants the throne, so ambition now demands he protect what he has stolen.
• He slaughters Macduff's wife and children, an act of pure cruelty with no political logic, showing how far conscience has been burnt away.
• He admits he is "in blood / Stepp'd in so far that... / Returning were as tedious as go o'er", meaning it is now easier to keep killing than to stop.

Ambition does not stay still. Once it has broken the moral order, it has to keep breaking it to survive. Each murder makes Macbeth more isolated and more monstrous.

This is the play's central warning: the pursuit of power corrupts the person who pursues it.

A key idea for the exam is that power seized wrongly brings no security or happiness. Macbeth gets everything the prophecy promised and enjoys none of it.

Before the murder he already fears that killing Duncan will "return / To plague th' inventor". After it, he cannot sleep, envies the dead Duncan who "sleeps well", and confesses he has "put rancours in the vessel of [his] peace" only for Banquo's heirs. He would rather "the frame of things disjoint" than "eat [his] meal in fear".

What Macbeth gains	What Macbeth loses
The crown of Scotland	Sleep, peace of mind and sanity
Absolute power	His marriage and his wife
The fulfilment of the prophecy	Loyalty, love and honour ("troops of friends")

By Act 5 he sees his own reign as empty: life is "a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing." The man who wanted everything ends with nothing that matters. Shakespeare presents power gained through ambition as hollow.

Ambition in Macbeth is inseparable from its Jacobean context (the reign of King James I, from 1603), which is why the theme is so rich for AO3.

Two contextual ideas do most of the work:

• The Divine Right of Kings. People believed a monarch was appointed by God, so a good king reflected divine order. Killing a king (regicide) was therefore a sin against God, not just a crime. Macbeth's ambition attacks the sacred order itself, which is why the natural world convulses when Duncan dies (horses eat each other, the sky darkens by day).

• The Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Just a year before the play, Catholic conspirators tried to blow up James I and Parliament. An audience in 1606 had freshly felt the horror of an attempt to murder their king. Macbeth dramatises exactly that fear and shows the ambitious usurper punished.

Shakespeare also flatters James through the theme. The witches show Macbeth a line of eight kings descended from Banquo, James's supposed ancestor, contrasting a rightful, God-blessed line with Macbeth's barren, stolen power. The play endorses legitimate authority and condemns the ambition that threatens it.

Ambition is one of the most common exam questions on Macbeth. A high-level answer tracks how the theme develops across the play rather than listing quotations.

A strong structure follows the arc of ambition:

1. Ambition awakened: the witches and Macbeth's first "horrid image" (Act 1).
2. Ambition fuelled and acted on: Lady Macbeth and the murder of Duncan.
3. Ambition corrupted into tyranny: Banquo, the Macduffs, paranoia (Acts 3–4).
4. Ambition punished: isolation, despair and defeat; order restored by Malcolm (Act 5).

1. Track the development; do not just define ambition

The best answers show change: the brave soldier of Act 1 becomes the "dead butcher" of Act 5. Movement across the play scores higher than a static list.

2. Keep Shakespeare in view

Write "Shakespeare presents ambition as..." rather than "Macbeth is ambitious because...". Naming the writer's choices and their effects targets AO2.

3. Weave in one strong context point

The Divine Right of Kings or the Gunpowder Plot links ambition to why regicide horrified a Jacobean audience. One embedded contextual point serves AO3 without turning the essay into a history lesson.

4. Use short, analysed quotations

"Vaulting ambition" repays close analysis of a single word better than a long quotation dropped in whole. Embed it and explain the effect.