diagnosis
Jiang glosses Adrian as a pope who climbed the ladder of power through ambition and now lies on the ground in repentance on the terrace of greed.
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Topic brief
A Jiang Lens evidence brief for this topic, built from source tags, transcript matches, and linked source refs.
Ambition
A transcript-matched topic anchored by excerpts such as "Okay, so they are now in a terrace of greed or avarice, and they're talking to Pope Adrian, who said that as Pope he..."
Showing 28 evidence items
No matching evidence on this topic page.
Topic Scope And Freshness
A transcript-matched topic anchored by excerpts such as "Okay, so they are now in a terrace of greed or avarice, and they're talking to Pope Adrian, who said that as Pope he..."
Key Notes
model
He argues that the judgment the play invites about Macbeth's ambition is inseparable from a sequence of interlocking actions, not just an isolated moral label.
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diagnosis
Bromwich argues that Macbeth's famous 'if it were done' speech is not a neutral hesitation but a fantasy of containing murder so completely that no consequence, earthly or eternal, would follow from the deed.
definition
He generalizes Macbeth's self-deception into a broader account of ambition: ambition feels like an outside force that takes a person over and strips away the inward capacity to care about right and wrong.
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model
Bromwich argues that Macbeth's way of isolating the deed in one place and one time is not unique to him but expresses a fantasy common to hard ambition more generally.
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evidence
He answers Jiang's question about prayer by citing Claudius in Hamlet, whose attempted confession confirms his guilt while also demonstrating that prayer can fail when ambition and sin remain intact.
model
Bromwich treats Claudius's failed prayer as proof that ambition can know exactly what it has done and still remain blocked from genuine self-knowledge or repentance.
other
By invoking Lincoln's admiration for Claudius's prayer, Bromwich extends the discussion from Shakespearean villainy to a broader political psychology in which dangerous ambition can coexist with greatness.
Timestamped Evidence
Transcript
"Okay, so they are now in a terrace of greed or avarice, and they're talking to Pope Adrian, who said that as Pope he..."
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"...I think we're asked to make about the play, about Macbeth's ambition, goes with a sequence of actions that have that sort of interconnection..."
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"He has both aspects in him. But the fact that he is haunted, the fact that he has a certain depth does not change..."
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"...see the amount of fantasy and the and the sense of ambition um just in the way the metaphors work uh in this speech..."
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"ambition which or leaps itself and falls on the other so the fantasy is in this bank and shoal of time like crossing a..."
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"Tell her exactly what's up. Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest Chuck, till thou applaud the deed. One of the, I can only call..."
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"...I want to suggest it's also a fantasy common to all ambition. Ambition in that sense, in that hard sense, is something as if..."
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"...it's made a passing moment in the play. It bears on ambition to ambition knows what it is, even though it's something that blocks..."
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"...entry to himself, and in other places less openly. I thought ambition was dangerous, but that his ambition is probably what allowed him to..."
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"...a confession of just how damned he feels by what his ambition led him to do. So make of that what you will. But..."
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"...as if he is led on by forces outside himself, as ambition does for you because he says to the he says to the..."
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"...putting off onto something slightly external the impulses that drives the ambition that is in"
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Relevant Lectures And Readings
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Related Topics
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