Unchecked ambition

Unchecked ambition is a force that reshapes both Banco and Macbett: prophecy turns Banco’s loyalty into envy and a scheme for influence, while Macbett converts fear of a rival dynasty into murder and demands obedience as proof of his kingship. The play presents ambition not as a private appetite alone, but as a desire amplified by predictions, betrayal, and the coercive performance of political authority.

Prophecy as a catalyst

Banco measures his prospects against Macbett’s apparent success. The Witches’ predictions have come true in sequence: Macbett is to become king after Baron Candor and Baron Glamiss. Banco reflects that the predictions omitted Duncan’s murder, in which he himself participated, and the marriage that makes Lady Duncan Lady Macbett. The fulfilled prophecy thus offers Banco both a reason to believe in what lies ahead and a painful account of what he has not received: Macbett has wealth, fame, power, and a wife, while Banco has no comparable reward.

The transformation matters because Banco recalls that he once wanted nothing beyond serving Duncan. He now describes himself as consumed by envy and jealousy, carried by an ambition he can no longer control. The Witches’ promise that he will father a line of kings, princes, presidents, and dictators supplies a compensating future, but it also makes his present childlessness and unmarried state newly urgent. Prophecy does not simply tell Banco what will happen; it gives him a dynastic measure by which to judge his current lack.

Banco’s plan for influence

Banco tries to turn that promised future into a practical program. He intends to marry the Lady in Waiting, partly because he thinks her ability to foresee danger could help them avoid it, and partly because marriage and a family appear necessary to the predicted succession. He also expects Macbett to make him chamberlain, though he doubts the promise: Macbett had pledged fidelity to Duncan and then killed him. Banco recognizes that his own participation in Duncan’s death may expose him to the same judgment.

The scheme reaches beyond accepting office. Once he has married, started a family, and become chamberlain, Banco plans to curtail Macbett’s powers and act behind the throne as his éminence gris. He even entertains the possibility that the predictions might change and that he could reign during his own lifetime. His ambition is therefore at once dynastic and immediate: the promised descendants console him, while political influence offers a route to rule now. Yet remorse interrupts the calculation. Banco cannot forget his part in Duncan’s murder, and, unlike Macbett, he lacks success and fame to smother the guilt. The scene holds together ambition and regret without allowing either to cancel the other.

Macbett’s response to a rival future

Hidden nearby, Macbett overhears Banco’s entire reflection. He interprets the promised royal line not as a distant prediction but as a conspiracy against his own rule. His anger sharpens when he realizes that his wife and her maid told Banco about the prophecy without telling him. He wonders whether he killed Duncan only to place Banco’s descendants on the throne, then resolves to attack the supposed danger at its source. When Banco answers Macbett’s call, Macbett accuses him of ingratitude for the chamberlainship he had intended to grant and stabs him in the heart.

The murder exposes the change in Macbett’s relation to ambition. A promise of office becomes worthless as soon as Banco appears to threaten the future Macbett wants to secure. Macbett’s reasoning treats prophecy as a snare that can be defeated through initiative, but his chosen initiative is the killing of the man whose descendants have been foretold. In trying to forestall that future, he makes ambition an immediate instrument of violence. The episode also echoes Banco’s doubts about Macbett’s word: Macbett’s proposed reward, like his earlier pledge of loyalty to Duncan, gives way when power seems at stake.

Kingship as a demand for assent

At the feast, Macbett presents his rule as an improvement on Duncan’s. He tells the guests that the country needs a younger, braver, more energetic ruler and insists that they have gained by the exchange. But he immediately turns the claim into an interrogation: he asks what they thought of Duncan while Duncan lived, whether they called him the bravest and most energetic commander, and whether they said Macbett should replace him. The questions make approval dangerous to withhold.

When the guests hesitate, Macbett presses them to answer and challenges anyone who thinks he is not the best possible ruler, past, present, and future, to stand and say so. No one does. He takes their silence as submission, calls them miserable specimens, and orders them to get drunk. Ambition here no longer appears as a plan to gain a position; it becomes a demand that everyone around the ruler enact his superiority. Macbett’s insistence on being judged the greatest and most just exposes the insecurity beneath the boast: kingship must be repeatedly affirmed because his authority cannot rest on willing, candid assent.

From desire to political violence

The two men’s trajectories give unchecked ambition distinct but connected forms. Banco imagines a family, office, and eventual influence, while recognizing the guilt and uncertainty that attend his rise. Macbett, already king, treats even a predicted future lineage as an intolerable rival claim and answers it with murder. At the feast he then seeks to control not only succession and power, but also the language by which his subjects may judge him.

The contrast makes prophecy an accelerant rather than an excuse that erases responsibility. The Witches’ predictions widen the characters’ sense of what may be possible; their choices determine how they pursue it. Banco’s hope of founding a dynasty entangles him in the same succession struggle that Macbett tries to end through violence. Macbett’s public insistence on universal praise completes the movement from private desire to political domination: the ambition that first seeks the throne ultimately demands that no one openly question the ruler who holds it.