Ambition - Macbeth

• Act 1 - Macbeth meets with the witches for the first time + they reveal their prophecies to him.

‘My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical…’

• Macbeth’s ambition leads to his demise (mental distress + insanity)

• Macbeth’s insatiable ambition is his tragic flaw.

• Here, Macbeth begins experiencing visions of the bloody knife.

‘a dagger of the mind, a false creation’

• Foreshadowing his downfall

‘Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on the other’

• The exclamative implies that ambition is an unnatural phenomenon

• Ross exclaims

‘Gainst nature still! Thriftless ambition, that will ravin…’

• Act 1 - Lady Macbeth is the catalyst for the plot, spurring her husband to commit murder

‘Art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it. ‘

What does LM mean by ‘illness’?

• LM believes that you can only act on ambitions + achieve greatness when you sacrifice or ignore your moral compass.

Lady Macbeth is…

ruthless.