Macbeth's ambition in Macbeth

Explore how Shakespeare presents M’s ambition.

In the play ‘Macbeth’, written by William Shakespeare in 1606, the character of Macbeth is utilised to convey the consequence of striving to reach an insurmountable ambition. 

In the extract, Shakespeare presents Macbeth as duplicitous and deceitful, hiding his immoral thoughts safely in his aside. Macbeth is conflicted by the idea of an insurmountable ambition but shows his innate evil desires leaking through the length of his prolonged aside. The use of sibilance, as utilised in “is smothered in surmise” alludes to the serpent from the story of Adam & Eve in the book of Genesis. The snake is known for trickery and is banished to hell for his evil acts. Similarly the serpent and Macbeth share traits later on in the text, which is foreshadowed here. To add on, when the evil thoughts of regicide flood Macbeth’s mind, he says “against the use of nature?”, implying he knows this ambition of his is wrong and is going against the divine right of kings, In the Jacobean Era, this it was believed that the lineage of kings were chosen by God, denotating that if you are against a king’s reign,…