In the beginning of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the title character is portrayed as a heroic soldier who is loyal to the King. Macbeth, however, is influenced by the witches’ prophecies and by his wife Lady Macbeth in his motive to kill. Lady Macbeth does not believe that her husband has the “guts” to take the necessary actions in order to become king. She thinks Macbeth is “too full o’ the milk of human kindness” (Shakespeare I, v, 17). Macbeth is mentally weak; therefore, Lady Macbeth is easily able to influence him.
Macbeth is a great example of this. Macbeth shows how ambition can be a good thing, or a bad thing. Macbeth’s loyalty and ambition leads him to becoming the thane of cordowr. But Macbeth remembers the prophesies of the witches, and debates on how I become king. He talks it over with his wife, and is pressured onto killing Duncan.
Lady Macbeth plays an important role in this play as she provides a scheme for Macbeth to assassinate King Duncan. After Macbeth had killed King Duncan, he later regrets on his wrong doing. Macbeth's first murder was a trying experience for him, however after his first murder, killing seemed to be the only solution to maintain his reign of the people of Scotland. Therefore, it was Lady Macbeth, through her plan, who introduced the concept of murder to Macbeth. Macbeth's ambition also influenced his declining character.
Lady Macbeth was one Shakespeare’s most courageous female characters. She convinced her husband to cruelly kill Duncan and urged him to be strong in the murder’s aftermath. Fortunately she was eventually scarred by the effect of Macbeth’s animosity towards her. In each case, ambition—helped, of course, by the hurtful predictions of the witches that’s what drove the couple to extreme insanity. The problem, the play suggests, is that once someone decides to use violence to further their quest for power, it is difficult to stop them.
Macbeth is the real villain and Lady Macbeth is just a partner in crime, egging him on because of her desire to be Queen. Macbeth was loyal to his King and was an excellent soldier. However his wife, Lady Macbeth could see a better future for Macbeth as King after Macbeth tells her about the witches and their prophesies in a letter. Despite these conflicting ideas, it was Macbeth himself who decided to murder Duncan and the others. It seems that most people believe that Macbeth is the real villain of the play, after firstly killing the King but then Banquo and Macduff’s family but through Macbeth’s own ambition and desire for power, Lady Macbeth was able to manipulate and evoke weaknesses in Macbeth’s character to cause his respectable needs as a loyal solider, to turn into evil motivations.
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is an intriguing play that was written and performed for James I, King of Scotland at that period of time. Macbeth consists of many different influences that drive noble Macbeth to a variety of murders and in mental disintegration of his mind the concept of misguided ambition is developed by those persuading him to kill. Three influences of Macbeth’s disintegrated mind would be the weird sisters, Lady Macbeth, and then his plots to kill out of fear and jealousy. First, in act one of Macbeth, noble Macbeth and Banquo meet three very odd witches, also known as the weird sisters. These witches are the true start of the disintegration of Macbeth’s mind and misguide him into a situation of rather to believe or not to believe for the sake of his future.
In the play Macbeth, the main theme is the corruption of power through unchecked ambition. Macbeth is a faithful soldier and a good man, until three witches tell him of his future. Upon telling his wife the grand news, she devises a scheme where Macbeth kills the king in order to make his future the present. Macbeth is wary at first, and often talks of his guilt and soul before the murder, but, in order to please his wife, and feed his desire to become king, he murders the poor king in his sleep. He then blames two guards for the deed and becomes king of Scotland.
Greed is the sin that causes Macbeth to commit murder; killing Duncan to secure the crown for his taking. Macbeth continues to make decisions based on what the witches tell him will come true. The witches’ prediction that Banquo will father a line of kings for Scotland motivates Macbeth to kill him for the same reasons at Duncan, to secure the crown. These actions played out by Macbeth are due to prophesy’s he has been told, but he is still responsible for the actions he has made. Along with greed, Macbeth’s actions are caused from his fear of losing the
Macbeths Tragic Flaw: Ambition Ambition is usually a strong force in everyone’s life, some leads to success and others to disaster. Macbeth’s tragic flaw is ambition, but is it really ambition that made him kill the king? It was more external forces that made him do this tragedy. The witches, Lady Macbeth, and his personal greed made him commit the murder. The witches were the first pushes to make Macbeth even consider committing murder.
In act 1 scene 3 the three witches foretold that Macbeth would become Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor and the King of Scotland. If not for the prophecies Macbeth’s curiosity and ambition to become King might never have begun in the first place, however when hearing the prophecies of becoming king, horrible imaginings of murder came across his mind. As it gets further into the play Macbeth increasingly relies on the prophecies given by the witches, this lead to the murder of many people and slowly corrupted Macbeth near the end of the play. The manipulation and influence of Lady Macbeth was also a factor of Macbeth’s becoming more and more evil. When Lady Macbeth reads her husband’s letter, she is afraid that Macbeth is not evil enough to do what he must to get the crown.