Analyze the play’s changing uses of “success,” including ambition, political succession, and the hope of beginning anew. Argue how these meanings shape Macbeth’s thinking before and after Duncan’s murder, and explain what the word reveals about the possibility—or impossibility—of leaving the past behind.
Practice adapted from: MIT OpenCourseWare · Tragedy — writing assignments ↗ · LEC #10, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, fifth assignment question
In Macbeth, success first appears to be an honorable reward for service, then becomes a crown Macbeth believes he must seize, and finally proves unable to erase the violence by which he won it. Shakespeare makes that change central to Macbeth’s fall. The Weird Sisters predict a future, but Macbeth supplies the actions that turn prediction into political fact. After Duncan’s murder, he tries to treat success as a finished achievement that can secure his rule and leave the crime behind. Instead, the play shows that a victory built on betrayal keeps producing fear and further violence. Macbeth can gain a title, but he cannot make its past disappear.
At the beginning, success has a public and earned meaning. Ross reports that Duncan has received news of Macbeth’s “success” in battle and praises his courage in defending Scotland. Angus explains that Duncan’s thanks are not payment enough: he and Ross are sent to present Macbeth to the king. The word here describes an achievement that serves the country and wins recognition from its ruler. That opening gives Macbeth a legitimate route to honor. His later desire for the crown is not simply ambition in the abstract; it is a desire that begins in a world where his ability has already brought him advancement.
In the margins Why this passage works +
“The word here describes an achievement that serves the country and wins recognition from its ruler.”
This sentence interprets “success” in the context of the opening battle report. It establishes a baseline for comparison: Macbeth’s first success is public, earned, and connected to service rather than private ambition.
The witches’ prophecy alters the object of success from battlefield distinction to succession. When Ross announces that Macbeth has become Thane of Cawdor, one prediction has already come true. Macbeth immediately calls the new title a sign that “the greatest is behind,” imagining the crown as the next reward. Banquo offers a warning: evil forces may use small truths to draw people toward harmful consequences. This contrast matters because Macbeth treats the accurate prophecy as evidence that the promised kingship is practically his, while Banquo sees truth as a temptation that still demands judgment. Macbeth begins to confuse a possible future with a claim he is entitled to fulfill.
In the margins Why this passage works +
“Macbeth begins to confuse a possible future with a claim he is entitled to fulfill.”
The distinction between prediction and entitlement is central to the essay’s argument. The witches speak about what may come; Macbeth’s response turns that possibility into a reason to act.
Macbeth’s private response reveals that the prophecy has awakened ambition but has not yet fixed his choice. He calls the supernatural promise neither wholly good nor wholly evil and recognizes that the thought of murder horrifies him. He even considers letting chance crown him without his intervention. Yet when Duncan names Malcolm Prince of Cumberland, Macbeth sees Malcolm as an obstacle to be overcome. His appeal to the stars to hide his “black and deep desires” marks a turn: he is no longer merely wondering what success might bring but concealing the desire to force it. The language of concealment anticipates a success that must hide its means.
Lady Macbeth helps convert that hidden wish into a plan. She believes Macbeth wants greatness but lacks the ruthlessness to take the “nearest way,” and promises to encourage him toward the crown. Still, Macbeth’s soliloquy before Duncan’s murder shows that he understands the cost. Duncan is his king, kinsman, and guest; Macbeth also expects that the act will teach violence that returns to punish its author. His recognition makes the decision ethically significant: he knows that the crime violates obligations and may bring consequences, yet admits that ambition is his only spur. In this moment, success means obtaining the crown, but the means already threaten the security that success is supposed to provide.
The dagger vision dramatizes how the desired achievement has begun to alter Macbeth’s experience before he acts. He questions whether the dagger is real or a “dagger of the mind,” then sees blood on it and understands that his own violent purpose is shaping what he perceives. He tries to imagine the earth keeping his secret, but knows that Duncan still lives while he delays. The bell finally calls him forward. This scene does not present the murder as a clean crossing from thought to reward: Macbeth’s imagination is already filled with the deed, and the sound that sends him toward Duncan also becomes, in retrospect, a death knell.
In the margins Why this passage works +
“This scene does not present the murder as a clean crossing from thought to reward: Macbeth’s imagination is already filled with the deed, and the sound that sends him toward Duncan also becomes, in retrospect, a death knell.”
The analysis connects the dagger imagery to the assignment’s question about beginning anew. Macbeth is psychologically implicated before the murder, so the act cannot function as a clean boundary between an old life and a successful new one.
Once Macbeth is king, political success does not bring the fresh beginning he expected. Banquo observes that Macbeth has received all the titles the Weird Women promised, but suspects that he played foully to gain them. Macbeth’s achievement is therefore inseparable from an account of how it was achieved. The witches also predicted that Banquo’s descendants would be kings, so Macbeth’s own success appears insecure: the crown has not ended political succession but placed him inside its uncertainty. His position depends on controlling the future as well as seizing the present. The title cannot settle the fear that another line may eventually inherit what he has taken.
At the end, Macbeth discovers that the prophecies offered no escape from consequences. When Macduff reveals that he was not born in the ordinary way Macbeth expected, Macbeth recognizes that the witches’ promises relied on double meanings. He condemns their words for keeping “the word of promise” while breaking hope. His complaint exposes the flaw in his earlier reasoning: he treated a prediction’s apparent success as a guarantee that he could control its meaning and outcome. By then, the crown has not enabled a new life. Macbeth’s rise has made him a tyrant whose defeat is publicly anticipated. Shakespeare’s shifting uses of success thus trace a movement from earned service to morally compromised power, then to a false promise of security. Macbeth can reach the crown, but neither the crown nor the prophecy can make him begin again as if Duncan’s murder had never happened.
In the margins Why this passage works +
“Macbeth can reach the crown, but neither the crown nor the prophecy can make him begin again as if Duncan’s murder had never happened.”
This concluding sentence directly answers whether Macbeth can leave the past behind. It distinguishes achieving political success from escaping moral and political consequences.
How the argument develops
The essay follows the word’s changing implications across the play rather than treating ambition as a fixed trait. It begins with Macbeth’s publicly honored military success, then contrasts Banquo’s caution with Macbeth’s response to the prophecies. The analysis traces the gap between Macbeth’s knowledge of the murder’s consequences and his decision to proceed, before examining how kingship fails to provide a fresh start. The conclusion returns to the prompt’s central question: Macbeth attains power, but cannot control what that power means or undo the past.
The revision, explained
Macbeth becomes ambitious after the witches predict that he will be king.
The witches’ accurate prediction awakens Macbeth’s ambition, but Shakespeare distinguishes the prophecy from Macbeth’s choice to treat a possible future as a reason to seize power.
The revision avoids reducing Macbeth’s decision to the witches’ influence. It makes the distinction between prediction and agency explicit, preparing the argument that Macbeth is responsible for how he pursues success.
Try the idea.
Choose one moment before Duncan’s murder and one after Macbeth becomes king. For each, explain what success seems to promise Macbeth and identify a specific image, word, or action that complicates that promise. End by explaining whether the later moment suggests he can leave the past behind.
See the self-check +
Before the murder, Macbeth’s imagined success is the crown, but the dagger vision complicates it: he cannot be sure the weapon is real, and his own violent purpose shapes what he sees. After he becomes king, Banquo’s suspicion that he gained power foully makes the crown an achievement that carries its history with it. Together, the moments suggest that Macbeth can obtain power but cannot make the crime disappear or turn success into a genuinely new beginning.
Sources and evidence
- William Shakespeare’s Macbeth · Project Gutenberg
References & further reading
- Macbeth ↗Folger Shakespeare Library