Eli Lam

Shakespeare frames ambition not as inherently noble nor inherently corrupt, but as a force whose moral colour is set by the soil it grows in. In Macbeth's case, the soil is barren: he has honour without purpose, courage without conviction. When the witches plant the seed — "All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter" — the ambition that takes root is not built on service but on self. Lady Macbeth makes this explicit. She fears her husband is "too full o' the milk of human kindness" to seize the throne. Her plea, "unsex me here", is not ambition as virtue but ambition as renunciation of conscience. The play asks us to watch what is given up to make ambition possible.