Thesis: In Shakespeare's play Macbeth, the ambitious protagonist degrades his relation to his conscience as he pursues unrivaled power, driving himself mad, mirroring the moral and physical decay plaguing Scotland.
Topic Sentence 1: In Acts 1 and 2, the guilt-ridden Macbeth indecisively entertains the idea of regicide, torn between his discernment and vaulting ambition.
EV1: “My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man That function is smother’d in surmise, And nothing is but what is not” (1.3.138-141)
EV2: “He’s here in double trust: First, as I am his kinsman and his subject–strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door Not bear the knife myself” (1.7.10-15)
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He hath honour’d me of late” (1.7.31-32)
EV4: “Sleep no more; Macbeth does murder sleep” (2.2.34-36)
EV5: “O, yet I do repent me of my fury That I did kill them” (2.3.105-106)
Topic Sentence 2: However, in Act 3, Macbeth relentlessly pursues unassailable power through ruthless butchery, a contrast exposing the absence of his moral compass.
EV1: “There is none but he Whose being I do fear” (3.1.53-54)
“in such bloody distance that every minute of his being thrusts That every minute of his being thrusts Against my near’st of life” (3.1.114-116)
EV2: “O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife! Though know’st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives” (3.2.36-38)
EV3: “The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done A deed of dreadful note” (3.2.42-44)
EV4: “with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale”