Banquo's Ambition In Macbeth

Macbeth, otherwise known as the Scottish play, is one of William Shakespeare’s most well known plays, among the ranks of Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. Since the play follows the characters’ development closely and illustrates just how sheer ambition can deeply affect a person to the core. In Macbeth, Macbeth yearns for more and more power, striving ever to take a seat on the throne; however, without his wife planting the seed of ambition, Macbeth would not have been driven to commit treason and be a generally cruel person. With much urging and convincing from Lady Macbeth, Macbeth strives to get what she believes he deserves. While Macbeth is the main character of the play, Lady Macbeth is indubitably ambitious to the point of evil, which

Her biting words she once used to elicit a desired response begin to fall on her husband’s deaf ears as he wallows in the guilt of the horrible treason and murder he has committed—he also lives in fear for his life with the threat of the truth being discovered about his dark secret. This in particular shows a pivotal point in the relationship between Lady Macbeth and her husband, for he is beyond her control and acting on his own. (Mac. Act III, Scene III) There is a great division between the two, as Banquo’s “ghost” begins to haunt Macbeth, which is, in truth, his guilt manifesting it self in a hallucination. Lady Macbeth attempts to sway her husband from committing more murders, which shows her guilty conscience, implying that she may not be as evil as she attempted to make herself out to be in order to satiate her appetite of ambition (BBC). Quickly, the guilt begins to eat away at the mental state of both Macbeth and Lady

After Macbeth becomes king, the problem of him being heirless arises; if he is to die, he will not be succeeded by a son. This is all especially frustrating for the two, as Macbeth is clearly under the impression that Lady Macbeth’s determination and thirst for blood cannot produce anything but male heirs (Mac. Act I, Scene VII). Freud truly believed this was part of what sent Lady Macbeth into a turmoil as well as the banquet not going as well as they had hoped; however, Freud realized that these details were all an extreme stretch, and instead considered the fact that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth may have been two pieces of the same personality, of which he said, “It would of course be pointless to regard her as an independent character and seek to discover the motives for her change, without considering the Macbeth who completes her.” (Sinfield) Freud goes to justify this point by bringing up when Macbeth saw the “dagger,” yet Lady Macbeth is later the one that faces the mental illness; Macbeth says he will not sleep again after he commits the murder, but Lady Macbeth is the one seen sleepwalking later on