Macbeth Essay by Jon M.

Macbeth’s ambition to control the power of the thrown confuses his judgment. He believes the prophecies of the three witches and then later, murderously, to his wife's bidding. Shakespeare uses Macbeth to show the terrible effects that ambition and guilt can have on a man who lacks strength of character. Although the play was written in 1600 in Scotland, its theme is universal and doesn’t care about time. Macbeth's lack of character strength shows that, that is his downfall.

Between meeting the witches and his wife's immoral determination, we are left wondering if Macbeth would ever stand a chance against fate. Maybe had he not started his crime gesture, he might not have ended so dreadfully and would not have become the “tyrant” everyone calls him by the end of the play. One could argue that Macbeth is motivated to commit his evil acts by three forces.

The three witches in the play are a pretty big influence on Macbeth. For example, the witches tell him that he will be the Thane of Cawdor and it comes true proving the witches right of their prophecies. Pretty much everything the witches said came true and made an effect on the play. Macbeth would go and tell everyone what the witches said and that also made an effect on the play.

When Lady Macbeth committed suicide there was a crazy dramatic scene with Macbeth and he was mad at her for what she did. Lady Macbeth is a huge factor in Macbeth’s evil acts. For instance, she is the one who really starts him off to killing King Duncan and everyone else because she wanted to be the queen aside of Macbeth. She constantly questions his manhood making him feel like a wuss if he doesn’t commit the act of killing and being a man.

I think that Lady Macbeth, all through the book, was the main cause of all this. I say this because even though Macbeth did the crimes and the witches gave him the idea, Lady Macbeth seemed to push him over at the start. If she had not convinced him to kill Duncan, than none of this whole mess would have started. Macbeth did not want to kill his king, although he wanted the throne he did not really want to do that because he swore an oath to protect his king. Also he had no problems with the king in the beginning. But Lady Macbeth just wanted the title of being queen so she convinced him to murder the king and start this whole mess, that didn’t need to be started.

In conclusion, Macbeth did have three other forces that motivated him to commit his evil acts and bring a whole lot of chaos to this play. The three forces were the witches and their prophecies of him being king and planting the seed, his own ambition to be king and hold that title and Lady Macbeth’s constant pushing and well thought of plans all added to his motivation of committing these many evil crimes. Although in the end Macbeth dies, his massacre and chaos still left a mess behind. Macbeth should be blamed for these acts, but in the end Lady Macbeth kills herself because she knows she was the one to blame.