Ambition Of Lady Macbeth By William Shakespeare Essay

Title William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, Macbeth is about ambition, and reveals that even though ambition can lead to success it can just as easily lead to failure. Shakespeare uses his character Lady Macbeth to demonstrate ambition leading to success, and also ambition leading to failure. At the beginning of the play she is ambitious and quickly becomes queen. However, as the play progresses that same ambition that made her queen transforms into guilt and drives her towards failure. In Macbeth Lady Macbeth’s ambition is the sole cause of her success. However, once she meets her goal the guilt that replaces her ambition leads to her downfall.

Initially, Lady Macbeth is presented as a strong willed and ambitious character. The moment she hears her husband is in a position to take the throne she says in a soliloquy “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way…”(Shakespeare, I.V.14-17) She is instantly infatuated with the idea of her husband becoming queen, and presents herself as the stronger willed character by saying that she fears Macbeth will not be willing to do what is necessary to rise to power, but she will.
Lady Macbeth was the driving force behind Duncan’s murder. Without her questioning Macbeth’s manhood and spurring him on to kill their king, they would never rise to power. Before the murder Macbeth is having second thoughts and says to…