Your thesis names the right engine — rituals that sustain ambition — but right now it's a description, not an argument. Two pushes:
1. Add tension. What does the conventional reading get wrong? Right now you sit beside it; you don't displace it.
2. Specify the rituals. Naming them (the soliloquy, the dagger speech, the "sere, the yellow leaf") will make the rest of the essay almost write itself.
Want me to suggest two sharper variants you can pick between?