Реферат: Macbeth And Ambition Essay Research

The King’s twisted mind too had been nearly destroyed. In his dementia, when word came that his wife had perished, lie remained nearly uni-noved. Moreover, as he dressed for battle, additional bad news arrived – Birnham Wood seemed to be moving toward them! Macbeth and his army rushed out to meet Macduff’s approaching forest of men. Macbeth fought recklessly, only bolstered by the false courage instilled by the witches’ pronouncement that “no man born of woman” could overthrow him.

Finally, the two warring leaders engaged in hand-to-hand combat. During the scuffle, Macbeth taunted Macduff; Macduff had not the capacity to kill him:

As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air

With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed.

Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests.

I bear a charmed life, which must not yield

To one of woman born.

But Macduff, still inflamed over the slaughter of his family, answered his enemy that he had never been, in a sense, “born of woman.” “Macduff was from his mother’s womb/ Untimely ripped,” he replied.

Macbeth now fought in fear, with waning strength. The rebel at last gained the upper hand and plunged his sword into Macbeth’s breast, then severed the head from the body of the bloody counterfeit King of Scott and Macduff returned to the castle and hailed Malcolm, good King Duncan’s rightful heir, the new King of Scotland.

Commentary

This popular, fast-moving and relatively uncomplicated play has become a standard of the effects of ambition. At the outset, Macbeth is perfectly honorable – and the object of special honor from his king. However, the witches’ suggestion that he will attain the throne taps the well of ambition in him that (presumably) lies within us all. By the time he has slain Duncan, Macbeth is locked into a career of murder, and eventually becomes so desensitized as to remain unmoved even by his wife’s death.

Granted, Macbeth likely would never have carried out his plans if not spurred on by his wife’s stronger personality. In some ways, she is more of a man that he (”come you spirits,” she prays, “unsex me here . . . “). But in the end she is overcome with guilt that manifests itself in crazed hallucinations.

Only Banque, among those whose lives were “blessed” by the witches, escapes temptation: first, by refusing the seductions of ambition; and second, by refusing to conspire with Macbeth against Duncan. He is, as the witches prophesy, “lesser than Macbeth, and greater … not so happy, yet much happier.” It is by no accident that Shakespeare’s Banquo is a pure, upright fellow. The historical Banque was the direct ancestor of James 1, the King of England at the time of Macbeth’s first performance.

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