EXPLORING THE THEMES OF POWER AND AMBITION IN
THE SELECT PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE
ABSTRACT
William Shakespeare, through his famous plays Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear has portrayed the
misuse of power and the resulting corruption it leads to. From the Elizabethan era to the present
age, corruption continues. In Macbeth, the prophecies of the witches led Macbeth to aim for the
throne and murder the King and many others for the fulfilment of his ambition. The play Hamlet
had me thinking of how humans can become a prey to corruption. The hunger for the chair and
power made Claudius murder his brother and Gertrude, disregarding her husband’s death, married
Claudius to remain in position; thus, marking the victory of ambition over love and family. The
tragic play King Lear is another example of corruption by greed and how the king is tricked by the
flattering words of her elder daughters Goneril and Regan, who plan to seize control of the empire.
Through as in-depth analysis, it can be seen that it is the hunger for power that corrupts people’s
minds and makes them treacherous and deceitful. Again, the power to rule, the power to attain
one’s desires is the root cause of such corruption. According to me, as long as this desire for power
continues, ambition will continue causing bloodshed. My dissertation attempts to explore how the
different shades of power and ambition is portrayed by Shakespeare. The paper will mainly focus
on how power affected people in the political field and led to the slaughter of innocents. The
violence and the impact of it on the society is colossal. I wish to throw light on this by doing a
comparative study on the plays of Shakespeare which have been mentioned earlier.
Keywords: power, corruption, ambition, greed, desire.