From the beginning of the play it is evident that both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth seek power and control. Macbeth strives to be crowned, and receive his power by chance while his wife prefers a quicker and more violent approach. It is Lady Macbeth's desire to control her husband and her wider desire to be powerful that sets Macbeth on a course of downfall and murder. This is because Lady Macbeth is unable to gain the power herself due to the status of women in society at the time, therefore, the only way in which Lady Macbeth can achieve her ambitions is to help her husband become king, and then reign over Scotland as queen.

It is not then only Lady Macbeth that possesses this "vaulting ambition" to become powerful and be in control. After all, it was Macbeth himself who approached his wife with the idea therefore he should bear the responsibility. Even though it is clear that Macbeth's ambition does not exceed his conscience until swayed by his wife. This leads us to believe that Macbeth's wife has a weak conscience. She herself needs little persuading to get to grips with the idea, and she even begins a ruthless attack on her husband in order to

convince him to the deed, clearly showing how important she sees the idea of killing Duncan.

Nevertheless after his first murder Macbeth begins to feel a sense of power in his own life and he starts to take charge of his own actions. The first evidence of this is when Macbeth kills Duncan's guards without Lady Macbeth's permission or consent. When she discovers her husbands unplanned murders Lady Macbeth is so shocked that she faints. Macbeth no longer needs Lady Macbeth to make his decisions for him, he has gained the power and control, but because she made him kill Duncan he can now kill more readily then he could have without her. This is evident as he plans the murder of Banquo and Fleance and hires the murderers himself without feeling any guilt or consulting his wife at all. In fact, Lady Macbeth urges him to forget what has happened in the past and move on. She says to him, "What's done is done," and "You must leave this". Macbeth, however, with his new sense of control, refuses to listen to her. He goes on with his plans to kill Banquo and later decides to kill Macduff's family. By killing Macduff's family, it shows us how far Macbeth has gone since his wife's influence to kill Duncan.

In conclusion, we can say that the witches planted the idea in Macbeth's head, and influenced him greatly into commiting the murder. However, it was also Macbeth's ambition that made him so willing to listen to both the witches and his wife. It is difficult to say whether fate is what caused Macbeth's downfall, although if this was the case, then why would the witches have talked to Macbeth in the first place? It is therefore obvious that it is the temptation of both Macbeth and his wife to become king and queen of Scotland that created the problems for Macbeth. Once he killed once, he had to continue killing in order to cover up the previous murders. We can be sure that the murders following Duncan's were all Macbeth's doing, and these murders are significant to Macbeth's downfall. However, the murder of Duncan, which is the most important, is not as clear-cut as that. I believe that it is the contributions of the witches, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth himself that cause Duncan's murder. Undoubtedly, it is temptation and ambition that drive both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to commit their crimes, although without the trickery within the witches' prophecies, Macbeth would not have been so confident in himself, and would perhaps not have had such a "Vaulting ambition."

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Approximate Word count = 1839
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)