Raise your voice, open your mind, unlock your imagination
How does Shakespeare represent the ambition of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in the selected soliloquies? Compare and contrast the two texts and explore Shakespeare’s use of language it reveals the action of ambition on both characters.
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Here’s a second soliloquy, this time from Macbeth’s point of view, around the time when he and Lady Macbeth are plotting to kill King Duncan.
Perform the same analysis on this (summarise, explore the language) and then start to develop a list of the things the two have in common and the things that set them apart. Your essay will explore these differences and what this says about their differing motivations at the beginning of the play.
MACBETH
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We’ld jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice
To our own lips. 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. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself
And falls on the other.
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Righto!
Chris Waugh
