The strength that yields to temptation

An Ideal Husband
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Oscar Wilde
Act 2

Sir Robert Chiltern:
Weak? Oh, I am sick of hearing that phrase. Sick of using it about others. Weak? Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation?  I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one’s life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not—there is no weakness in that. There is a horrible, a terrible courage. I had that courage. 

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Perhaps it isn't apropos to draw any connections between a Wildean comedy and a Shakespearean tragedy, but I think there is something of Macbeth in Sir Robert's sentiment: the nightmarish courage involved in yielding to a heinous and horrific temptation. The royal greatness Macbeth sought was not the greatness he ultimately achieved. It was his willingness to grasp the nettle, to embrace an impossible and appalling ambition, that finally thrust him into tragic greatness. Lady Macbeth was overcome by a spot of blood; Macbeth found the will to wade through a river of the stuff. For so many years that has been the image I've associated with Macbeth: a single, battered figure, trudging through thick water, soaked to the bone with the mortality of common men, tearing fear and fate and morality off his back—compelled by a strength and courage that is as implacable as the doom that reaches for him from behind. 

"And betimes I will, to the weird sisters:
More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,
By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good,
All causes shall give way: I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er..."
Macbeth, Act III, Scene IV