Throughout the play, Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a character who lacks ambition and is entirely fuelled by other individuals and innate urges. In the extract, Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a skeptic character who lacks drive when he is considering murdering Duncan. For example, "bloody instructions ... return to plague the inventor." Shakespeare uses foreshadowing through the motif of blood to allude to how Macbeth and his wife will become overcome with guilt that will "plague" them until their eventual demise. Also, Shakespeare highlights Macbeth's lack of ambition through his use of his wife. For example, "I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition which overleaps itself and falls on the other". The noun "spur" is used to symbolise Lady Macbeth and how she bears the ability to kickstart Macbeth's murderous intents when they appear entirely subconscious and lacking in real potential. At the time of the play, the patriarchal Jacobean society had very strict gender roles, with men displaying typical masculine attributions of strength, whilst women were seen as the property of their father or husband. Shakespeare uses the Macbeth's relationship to transgress these expectations, thus suggesting that Lady Macbeth bears the majority of power in the relationship. This shows that whilst Macbeth lacks drive, he has a deep psychological understanding of his wife and manoeuvres her in order to unleash and act as a catalyst for his murderous ambition. Shakespeare uses the deceitful nature of the witches to suggest that Macbeth has full control over his ambition. For example, "fair is foul and foul is fair, hover through the fog and filthy air." The use of fricative alliteration suggests that the witches have aggressive intentions, which is later perhaps reflected in Macbeth's violent actions later in the play. However, the witches also use trochaic tetrameter during their paradoxical speeches. This scheme of rhyme adds to their mystery but also suggests that they are childish. Later in the play, in Act 5, Macbeth has his peripeteia and realises that their prophecies were in fact incredibly deceitful: "damn all that trust them." During the Jacobean period, King James held unignorable views around the supernatural, expressed in his book, Demonologie. Shakespeare uses the witches not only warn the audience about the dangers of meddling with the supernatural but also to appease James and seek his patronage. This shows Macbeth to be an ambitious character because whilst on first glance, the witches seem violent, they never actually tell Macbeth to take any action. Macbeth ignores their childish nature and personally decides to take action, revealing that the witches bear no real power but rather Macbeth's pure ambition is his hamartia. However, Shakespeare suggests that Macbeth is lead not by ambition but rather blood lust. For example, "never shook hands nor bade farewell before he unseamed him from the nave to the chaps." The repetition of "never" reacts Macbeth's disregard for the feelings of other humans and his unnatural love for violence. This is reiterated through the use of violent descriptive languages, "unseamed him from the nave to the chaps", suggesting that Macbeth has used a dagger to slay MacDonald in an incredibly up close and personal manner. Furthermore, Macbeth's bloodlust is demonstrated through his reaction to Banquo's ghost: "never shake thy gory locks at me." The adjective "gory" suggests that Banquo's blood-soaked hair is the first thing he is drawn to, which triggers the paranoia that leads him to murder Macduff's family in "one foul swoop" purely out of fear. At the time of Shakespeare writing the play, James I had survived the Gunpowder Plot. This act of treason would have given him an irrefutable license to murder all the Catholics in the country as retribution. However, Shakespeare is suggesting to the audience, and James I, that cruelty and kingship do not belong together, and when they are, they result in catastrophic mental unravelment. This suggests that Macbeth is in fact not an ambitious character but perhaps is driven instead by an innate desire to kill.