Macbeth :: essays research papers

"Macbeth Essay"     In the play Macbeth we hang many common themes that do emerge. One of which is the theme of ambition which volition at the end eventually lead to the death of the main character. We see this in the eventual death of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In this essay I hope to show the dominant theme of ambition and how it leads to the downfall of the main characters in the play.     We first start to see Macbeth getting his ambition to become great power in his quote when he says "if chance exit have me king, why chance may crown me, without my stir"(I.iii.34-37). Here we see that Macbeth is growing ardent and eager to become the king. He just doesn&8217t want to sit back and wait for himself to be crowned and let destiny hightail it it&8217s course, he wants to be part of it when it happens, and he wants to be king right now. And this is when it all turns downhill. He is starting to become very challe nging for the thrown. We testament also soon see that he will stop at nothing short of killing the current king and he will even go so far as to kill one of his friends, and try to kill his son in order to try and become the refreshed king.      Next we see this theme again when Macbeth says "Me thought I heard a voice cry "Sleep no more, Macbeth does murder sleep," the innocent sleep"(II.ii.64-66). Here again we see Macbeth is starting to hear voices and he is starting to go a little crazy. Here is where things really start to head downhill, and they go down fast. Because of Macbeth&8217s ambition for king he has killed the current king. Now he thinks he is hearing voices that keep him from getting his sleep. And as we will later see, Macbeth will eventually die due to his over eager ambition to become the new king. The event of killing the king will stage into play a whole chain of events that will soon show the downfall of Macbeth from h is short lived thrown.     On the other hand we can also see this ambition with Lady Macbeth. She also shows us the signs that she is getting over ambitious to become the new queen when she says "Thou wouldst be great Art not without Ambition, but without, the illness should attend it"(I.