Ambition, Politics, and the Gendered Self: A Comparative Study of Power and Desire in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, and Behn’s The Rover

 Ambition, Politics, and the Gendered Self: A Comparative Study of Power and Desire in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, and Behn’s The Rover

Abstract

This paper undertakes a comparative study of the relationship between ambition, political instability, and the gendered self as depicted in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (c. 1606), John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel (1681), and Aphra Behn’s The Rover (1677). Examining the texts across three distinct generic and historical contexts—Tragedy, Heroic Satire, and Comedy of Manners—it is argued that while male ambition is primarily a destructive, publicly staged phenomenon focused on regicide or treason, female desire and ambition operate as a subversive force, either through psychological manipulation that violates natural order (Lady Macbeth) or through a deliberate, self-assertive quest for social and sexual autonomy (Hellena and Angellica Bianca). Ultimately, the study contends that the texts reveal a shift in the depiction of desire: from the cosmic tragedy of ambition’s self-destruction in the Jacobean era to the pragmatic, often gendered negotiation of political and personal freedom in the cynical, post-Civil-War world of the Restoration.

Keywords

Ambition, Politics, Gender, Macbeth, Absalom and Achitophel, The Rover, Tragedy, Satire, Libertinism.

1. Introduction: The Tripartite Vision of Power

The pursuit of power, whether driven by naked ambition, political necessity, or social desire, forms the bedrock of English literature from the Renaissance through the Restoration. This study analyzes three canonical works—Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, and Behn’s The Rover—to uncover how ambition and desire are inextricably linked to political upheaval and the negotiation of gendered identity across these pivotal eras. Though spanning roughly seventy years and radically different genres, these texts collectively map the evolution of the concept of the "self" in relation to the state.

Macbeth presents ambition as a catastrophic internal flaw, a "vaulting ambition" that violates divine and natural law, resulting in bloody tragedy and cosmic disorder. Dryden’s political satire, Absalom and Achitophel, shifts the stage to the cynical, post-Civil-War world of the Exclusion Crisis, where ambition is intellectualized into manipulative rhetoric, a disease of the body politic. Finally, Behn’s The Rover, a comedy of libertinism, moves the locus of desire from the throne room to the carnival street, re-framing ambition as the gendered quest for freedom, autonomy, and social mobility. The comparison allows us to trace a profound change: from ambition as a fatal, un-gendered sin against God, to a witty, pragmatic, and highly gendered tool for survival in a fragmented political and social landscape.

1.1. Thesis Statement

This paper contends that the depiction of power and desire shifts fundamentally across these three works: in Macbeth, ambition is a transcendent, destructive force that violates the sacred social order and leads to total annihilation; in Absalom and Achitophel, ambition is satirized as a dangerous, treasonous political disease treatable by strong governance; and in The Rover, desire is democratized and gendered, serving as a necessary strategy for women to achieve self-assertion and transactional liberty within a politically unstable society.

1.2. Methodological Approach

The analysis will proceed in three comparative stages. First, I will establish the common ground of masculine political ambition by contrasting the regicidal plot of Macbeth with the political machinations of Achitophel, drawing on scholarship by Zwicker and Greenblatt. Second, the study will focus explicitly on the gendered dimension of ambition, comparing the tragic maternal fantasies and self-erasure of Lady Macbeth (Adelman, Narayan) with the assertive, libertine self-fashioning of Behn’s heroines (Todd, Hughes, Staves). Finally, I will analyze the differing ideological resolutions of the texts—tragedy, satire, and comedy—to illustrate how each genre reinforces or subverts the prevailing political and social definitions of power and desire.

2. The Architecture of Masculine Political Ambition: Macbeth and Absalom and Achitophel

In both Macbeth and Absalom and Achitophel, masculine ambition is the primary engine of political disruption, yet the nature, scale, and social implications of this ambition differ vastly, reflecting the shift from the Jacobean era’s concern with cosmic order to the Restoration’s cynical focus on civic disorder.

In Macbeth, ambition is a singular, internal, and almost supernatural affliction, immediately linked to the violation of the sacred order of kingship. Macbeth's desire to wear the "golden round" is a metaphysical urge, one that necessitates a bloody, personal act of regicide. The language is spiritual and visceral; he is perpetually haunted by the deed, realizing that he has "hath murder’d sleep" (2.2.40). The crime is framed not just as treason against Duncan, but as a violent rupture of the natural fabric of Scotland, reflected in the "unruly night" and the horses that "eat each other" (2.4.11-18).

Dryden's satire, written 75 years later, portrays ambition not as a singular, heroic flaw, but as a widespread political opportunism infecting a fragmented society. The ambitious figures are not tragic warriors but calculating rhetoricians. The central instigator, Achitophel, is defined by his intellect and persuasive power, his ambition less about personal glory than about destabilizing the established monarchy for self-serving political ends. Steven Zwicker’s analysis of Dryden’s Argument in Absalom and Achitophel emphasizes that the poem is fundamentally about the danger of specious reasoning and false counsel (Zwicker 95). Achitophel's character is less a man and more a political disease:

"A fiery Soul, which working out its way, / Fretted the Pigmy Body to decay: / And o’er-inform’d the Tenement of Clay" (156–158).

2.1. Regicide vs. Rhetoric: The Means of Overthrow

Macbeth’s method is the dagger. His ambition is realized through physical violence, which Greenblatt links to ancient rituals and anxieties over political stability (Greenblatt 305). The fear is that the sanctity of the king's body, the political body, has been physically violated, leading to chaos that can only be resolved by a counter-force (Macduff/Malcolm). The outcome is decisive: death and restoration of the rightful line.

Achitophel’s method is persuasion, articulated in the famous passage where he attempts to seduce Absalom into rebellion. He uses flattery, historical precedent, and appeals to popular desire to achieve his goal. Susan C. Greenfield explores how this political ambition is framed around generational anxiety and the creation of a "mother plot" to subvert the legitimate royal line, making the rhetoric itself a violent, though non-physical, act of treason (Greenfield 507). The fear in Dryden is that persuasive lies can be as destructive as a dagger, eroding civic trust and causing a "second chaos" (Dryden 13). The resolution here is also decisive, but achieved through the King's divinely sanctioned rhetoric, crushing the rebellion not with bloodshed but with powerful, unifying language.

2.2. The Corrupting Influence of Counsel

Macbeth is driven by the prophecies of the Witches and the constant pressure of Lady Macbeth. The Witches represent a dark, anti-order destiny, while Lady Macbeth is the human agent of corruption. In both cases, the external influence is what crystallizes the internal, destructive ambition.

In Dryden, Achitophel is the pure distillation of corrupt counsel, a Machiavellian intellectual who poisons the politically naive Absalom. Achitophel’s role as the seducer mirrors the Serpent’s role in tempting Adam, but transposed into a purely secular, political sphere. His ability to manipulate the crowd, the "common Cry" (Dryden 194), through rhetoric underscores the Restoration's fear of demagoguery and the public's susceptibility to false intellectual leadership (Zwicker 105).

In summary, masculine political ambition is defined by its scale and its public threat. In Macbeth, it is a tragedy of a great man’s fatal flaw, while in Absalom and Achitophel, it is a systemic, intellectual failure of the state.

3. The Gendered Self and the Desire for Sovereignty

The greatest divergence between the Jacobean tragedy and the Restoration texts lies in the treatment of the female desire for power. While Lady Macbeth’s ambition is a desperate act of gender subversion that leads to self-erasure, the heroines of The Rover enact a pragmatic, self-assertive project for freedom, using the post-Civil-War instability to their advantage.

3.1. Maternal Fantasies and the Desperate Self: Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth is the quintessential tragic figure whose ambition is utterly bound up with her denial of female identity. She understands that to facilitate regicide, she must reject her biological and social self, famously demanding:

"Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full / Of direst cruelty!" (1.5.40-43).

She seeks to override her nature to possess the power she desires, but she can only gain vicarious power through her husband’s actions.

Janet Adelman argues that Lady Macbeth’s ambition is fundamentally a desire to control the process of birth and power creation—a maternal fantasy gone wrong, as she seems obsessed with the sterility of their relationship and the violent rejection of her sex:

"I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, / And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you / Have done to this." (1.7.54-59).

This chilling image underscores her belief that the only way to achieve sovereignty is through the total, violent negation of her gendered identity. Her ultimate successful ambition leads to her complete psychological disintegration, an erasure of the self that mirrors the destructive political violence they unleashed. Her end is madness and death, a punitive demonstration of the impossibility of female political ambition in the Jacobean world.

3.2. Libertinism as Political Freedom: The Women of The Rover

In contrast to Lady Macbeth’s tragic internal self-violation, Aphra Behn’s women in The Rover (Hellena, Florinda, and Angellica Bianca) embody a Restoration understanding of desire as a pragmatic tool for achieving social sovereignty. Set during the Carnival in Naples, the play is a world where political and social rules are fluid, reflecting the chaos and opportunism of the post-Restoration court.

Hellena, the main heroine, is not concerned with political regicide but with achieving personal and sexual autonomy. Her "ambition" is to escape the constraints of the convent and the imposed marriage. This is an act of self-assertion, not self-negation. Janet Todd’s work, “Aphra Behn: Sexuality and Self-Assertion,” highlights how the play’s women "demand an acknowledgement of their desires that challenges patriarchal structures" (Todd 174). Their desire for freedom is expressed through the libertine mask of the carnival.

Derek Hughes notes that the play uses the language of transaction and commodification to give its female characters a degree of agency unavailable in earlier periods (Hughes 272). Angellica Bianca, the famous courtesan, frames her desires in purely economic and self-protective terms. Her desire is for financial independence and respect, a form of economic sovereignty. When Belvile fails to respect her, she attempts to shoot him, an ultimate act of self-defense that links economic autonomy directly to a claim of physical power.

The freedom sought by Behn’s women is, as Susan Staves discusses, not the absolute sovereignty of the monarch but the transactional and social liberty necessary for survival in a complex, shifting society (Staves 110). Unlike Lady Macbeth, whose power play results in her complete psychological erasure, Hellena achieves her goal by maintaining a fluid, witty self and demanding terms that suit her desire.

3.3. Contrasting Destinies: Erasure vs. Assertion

• Jacobean Tragedy (Macbeth): Female desire for power is unnatural, achieved vicariously, requires the violent rejection of femininity, and is punished by madness, death, and erasure from the political narrative.

• Restoration Comedy (The Rover): Female desire for freedom is natural, achieved through witty self-assertion and transactional negotiation (often sexual or economic), and is rewarded with marriage to a man of her own choosing and a measure of social sovereignty.

While Lady Macbeth seeks to un-sex herself to gain masculine power, Hellena and Florinda embrace the complexity and mask-wearing inherent in their gendered roles to gain self-determined freedom.

4. Ideological Frameworks: Tragedy, Satire, and Comedy of Freedom

The distinct generic frameworks of the three works—Tragedy, Satire, and Comedy—are not merely stylistic choices but reflections of their differing ideological projects concerning political order, stability, and the bounds of ambition.

4.1. Tragedy and the Violation of Natural Order

Macbeth operates within the framework of Aristotelian and Christian tragedy. The play’s political ideology is conservative, built on the principle of the "Great Chain of Being" and the sacred nature of hereditary kingship. Macbeth’s ambition is the hamartia (fatal flaw) that violates this immutable, divinely sanctioned hierarchy. The consequence of his political desire is a cosmic disruption, where the moral and natural worlds turn upside down. Ambition is not an individual failing alone, but an assault on the universe itself. The atmosphere is one of profound moral seriousness, where desire is weighed against the soul’s damnation.

4.2. Satire and the Restoration of Civic Order

Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel substitutes cosmic disorder for a pragmatic, civic threat. As Heroic Satire, its purpose is to mock and marginalize the dangerous ambition of specific historical individuals. Dryden’s ideological project, as articulated by Laura Brown, is to use the elevated, classical form of the epic couplet to impose literary and political order on the chaos of the Exclusion Crisis (Brown 547).

The satire’s structure is designed to show that ambition in the political sphere is not a spiritual failing (like Macbeth’s) but a lack of loyalty and a disease of the intellect. The political resolution is achieved not by a tragic confrontation, but by the King (Charles II, represented by David) using his divinely endowed reason and authority to assert control and restore social cohesion. The King’s word resolves the ambition-fueled plot, asserting that political desire, when channeled into treasonous action, will be met by the restored legal structure of the monarchy.

4.3. Comedy and the Fluidity of Identity

Aphra Behn’s The Rover presents the most radically different ideological stance. Set in a world of temporary identity (Carnival), the genre allows for the temporary suspension of rigid social rules, enabling female desire to be a source of pleasure and social maneuvering rather than a tragic flaw. The play’s resolution, the series of negotiated marriages, does not restore a sacred political order (like Macbeth) or an established civic order (like Absalom and Achitophel). Instead, it establishes a new social order based on the terms set by the women.

The use of comedy allows the play to treat political instability as a background for personal opportunity. The Cavaliers (like Willmore, the Rover) are politically displaced men—royalist exiles—who rely on opportunism and wit. The women, too, are effectively social exiles from the rigid marriage market. Their success in controlling their destinies is a subversive comment on the political and social vacuum of the Restoration. Derek Hughes argues that Behn’s comedy legitimizes a form of "female libertinism," turning ambition into a calculated play for liberty (Hughes 278). The genre of comedy permits the assertion of the gendered self without the punitive ending meted out by tragedy.

5. Conclusion: Power, Desire, and the Unstable Self

The journey through Macbeth, Absalom and Achitophel, and The Rover provides a powerful study of the shifting contours of ambition in English literature. From the Jacobean era to the cynical pragmatism of the Restoration, the texts confirm that the desire for power and sovereignty is perpetually destabilizing, yet its expression and consequences are fundamentally dictated by historical context and gender.

Macbeth establishes ambition as an ancient, theological sin that must be tragically annihilated to preserve a cosmic order. Lady Macbeth’s doomed attempt to “unsex” herself proves the impossibility of female political ambition operating outside of masculine channels. Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel secularizes this ambition, rendering it a manageable civic threat, which is then overcome by the unifying, authoritative language of the legitimate monarch.

It is in Behn’s The Rover that ambition is fully democratized and, crucially, gendered. Female desire is decoupled from the fate of the state and repurposed as a strategic pursuit of personal and sexual liberty. Unlike Lady Macbeth, who sought to destroy her nature to gain power, Hellena uses her nature, her wit, and her social position to redefine her freedom. The difference is the shift from a tragic, all-consuming sovereignty to a pragmatic, achievable sovereignty.

Ultimately, these three masterpieces confirm that while male ambition constantly seeks to overturn the state, female desire in these periods is largely confined to the project of re-creating the self within the state’s unstable parameters. The literature shows a progressive evolution from the absolutist, theological condemnation of ambition in Macbeth to the cynical, self-assertive, and transactional negotiation of desire that defines the gendered self in the post-revolutionary Restoration world.

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