Act 3, Scene 3
Prior to The Banquet Scene
Before the Turning Point
How Lady Macbeth and Macbeth behave
in private
We see this change in the Macbeths' relationship almost
immediately at the start of the scene, when Lady Macbeth
has to almost ask permission to see her own husband:
Say to the king, I would attend his leisure
For a few words.
This is a good indicator of the growing split in their
relationship. Compare this to how close they were before,
during and just after the murder of Duncan.
After the servant leaves, Shakespeare gives Lady Macbeth a brief
soliloquy which shows she understands the uselessness of their
new position of power:
Nought's had, all's spent
She contemplates how they have given everything and got
nothing, because:
...our desire is got without content
She realises that power has not brought them happiness.
She then goes on to make a powerful statement:
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy
In other words, she says that it is better to be dead - and
therefore at peace - like those they have killed, than to live
waiting for destruction, always looking over your shoulder in
uncertainty and paranoia.
This is a very private side to Lady Macbeth, which only a
soliloquy would reveal. She would never admit this to anyone.
We see here a woman gradually sinking into depression and
mental illness; also, though, we see
a woman who understands
that she was wrong.
Yet, her incredible strength and power of mind are shown yet
again when Macbeth enters. She does not confide in him and
instead insists that he should not worry about things which
cannot be fixed:
Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what's done is done.
The irony here is that the audience has just heard her expressing
her own doubts and worries about things which can't be fixed.
She sounded almost suicidal in her soliloquy but now she is
urging her husband not to worry. Despite all the previous
manipulation, she clearly loves him.
Macbeth confides in her about his feelings:
We have scorch'd the snake, not kill'd it
The biblical allusion to Satan is clear. Macbeth is comparing
Banquo and Fleance to a snake, a dangerous, evil animal.
However, Macbeth, ironically, doesn't realise that he is the
snake, the evil one, and that the only way he will find true
peace will be to die. Shakespeare uses the snake to
represent Macbeth's own unsettled, paranoid mind, but the
character of Macbeth means that the snake is the next threat
to his position: Banquo and Fleance.
However, crucially, Macbeth hides the murder plot from Lady
Macbeth. He has just spoken to and hired three murderers to kill
Banquo and Fleance that very night.
Think back to Duncan's murder, when they were in it together. They
confided in each other, relied on each other and supported each other.
Now, he is acting of his own accord, cutting her out of his plans. He
needs her to support him less and less.
Ironically, he is becoming the kind of man Lady Macbeth wanted him
to be at the start, and is no longer full of the milk of human kindness.
However, as he changes, their relationship changes also. He does not
need her and, when she dies, he barely acknowledges her. This is not
something Lady Macbeth would have anticipated or wanted.
We begin to see how Macbeth is breaking down in this same
speech. He acknowledges that they:
eat their meal in fear and sleep / in the affliction of terrible dreams
In other words, his guilty conscience means he suffers
nightmares when he sleeps and during the day he is paranoid
about the next threat to his crown. He also acknowledges that
Duncan is truly at peace and happy, but where LM reflected that
they would better off dead, Macbeth is taking action by plotting
more murder. Note how their roles have changed from the start
of the play.
The theme of appearance vs. reality is further developed
here through Lady Macbeth's cheerful act. As we have
previously seen, she is feeling the strain mentally, however
she appears to be in control of herself in public:
Come on;
Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks;
Be bright and jovial among your guests tonight.
Macbeth hints to his wife about the plot to murder
Banquo, and her response is a direct and simple command:
You must leave this.
Compare how Macbeth previously regarded his wife. He
listened and was won over by her. She clearly expects him
to listen to her. However, he reiterates that his mind is full
of scorpions because Banquo and Fleance live. Lady
Macbeth points out that they will not live forever.
Macbeth does take some comfort that Banquo and Fleance
are mortal and can be killed. He is about to tell his wife
about the murder plot and then stops himself. Lady Macbeth
asks him directly:
What's to be done?
Yet he does not tell her:
Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck
Why?
Macbeth calls on the night, which is personified, to give him courage. This
recalls Lady Macbeth's previous speech in the first Act, where she called on
the night to give her darkness, so she could perform dreadful deeds. He is
taking over her previous role in the relationship.
He ends by stating that committing evil will make him stronger, again
sounding very like Lady Macbeth in the opening scenes.
Notice, also, that he tells his wife to go with him:
So, prithee, go with me
The balance in their relationship has shifted: he is now in charge. This, we
can glean, is not something Lady Macbeth foresaw when she called on him
to be more 'manly'
Act 3, Scene 4
The Banquet Scene
The Turning Point
This is a key scene for a number of reasons:
Firstly, Macbeth loses it and everybody sees that he has murdered
Duncan. This scene is the turning-point in Macbeth's career. Up to this
time, with all his hesitation and wild fancies and gloomy suspicions, he
has had strength of mind and self-control enough to push forward to
his objects and to hide from public view the bloody means by which he
has obtained them. In this scene, however, we see a fatal collapse of his
powers.
Secondly, his relationship with Lady Macbeth begins to deteriorate. He
passes altogether beyond his wife's control. She had been able to brace
him up to the murder of Duncan and to control and direct him in the
outburst of excitement which followed. In this scene, however, she is
utterly unable to restrain him, and is forced to listen helplessly to the
ravings that betray his guilty secret.
Lastly, the play changes direction from here. From this scene onwards,
it is only downhill for Macbeth as he begins to lose everything.
This scene is in complete contrast to the Act 3, Scene 2. The
Banquet Scene is the public face of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth,
hiding their deceit and hypocrisy with a public show of dignity,
loyalty and friendly rule.
Macbeth is keen to show that he is willing to 'mingle' and be
'humble', to prove he is normal, rather than a cold, aloof, figure of
authority.
Yet Macbeth cannot sit still and one of the murderers appears at
the door to make the secret entrance. Macbeth asks his wife to
make a toast, using her as a distraction.
Macbeth speaks to the murderer urgently, telling him he has
blood on his face but goes on to say that it is better Banquo's
blood is on the murderer than inside Banquo. So panicked as he
feels, it is not a panic that comes of remorse.
The news that Fleance is not dead results in Macbeth's panicked
state of mind. Had Fleance died, he would have been:
Whole as marble, founded as the rock / As broad and general as
the casing air
But because he is alive, he feels:
...cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears
Macbeth's guests, in the meantime, are waiting for him to make
the toast. This is the first hint to them that he is distracted.
Lady Macbeth takes control of the situation, even though we
know that mentally she is struggling to remain in control
herself:
My royal lord, / You do not give the cheer
Here, I think, we can admire Lady Macbeth's incredible
strength and will-power. Even in the face of such mental
strain, she gears herself up and forces herself to take control.
It is ironic that as Macbeth is criticising Banquo for not being there,
his ghost enters and sits on Macbeth's seat. Rosse invites Macbeth to
sit, but Macbeth sees no spare seats because the ghost is there.
A series of repeated questions serve to add tension here, as the guests
show Macbeth the seat and he cannot see it. This dramatic tension is
enhanced by the fact that the guests can't see the ghost.
Macbeth begins speaking to the ghost, which undoubtedly would have
unnerved his guests, and aroused suspicion:
Thou canst not say I did it: never shake
Thy gory locks at me
Again, Lady Macbeth tries to take control: she covers for him
by saying he suffers from a mental illness and that it will
soon pass.
She shows incredible quick thinking.
She tells the guests not to pay him too much attention as it
will only offend him. However, the damage is done.
Lady Macbeth speaks directly to Macbeth now:
Are you a man?
She has said this several times throughout the play and each
time it has affected Macbeth and caused him to do as she
said. However, it no longer works. The roles in their
relationship are changing.
Macbeth replies that the sight of Banquo is so terrible it
would disgust the devil, so any man, and not only him, would
be frightened to look at it.
She pours scorn on him again, referencing when he 'saw' the
dagger before killing Duncan. She compares him to a woman,
again equating fear and hesitancy with femininity (despite the
fact that she herself is a woman, and is neither hesitant nor
fearful):
O, these flaws and starts,
Imposters to true fear, would well become
A woman's story at a winter's fire
She is basically telling him he's weak and should be ashamed of
himself, because he is only looking at an empty chair.
Yet again Macbeth ignores his wife. Her scorn and
accusations of cowardice and femininity do not seem to
work any more.
Macbeth tries speaking to the ghost, but it vanishes (just like
the witches) just as he wants to find out more.
Does the ghost represent Macbeth's guilty conscience getting
the better of him? Is this why no one else can see it?
Again, Lady Macbeth attempts her tried and
tested tactic of calling him a coward:
What, quite unmann'd in folly?
It does not work. The hold that she used to
have on her husband has weakened even
more.
With the ghost gone, Macbeth tries to regain some control
over the situation, saying he is ill and proposing a toast to
Banquo, but the ghost returns.
Now, this is where Macbeth loses it completely:
Avaunt! And quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!
He is now shouting at the ghost, in the middle of a dinner
party of lords, his coronation feast, which he is hosting!
From the point of view of the guests and audience, he is
shouting at the air and must appear to be completely
insane.
A king has to inspire confidence by appearing confident and
in control. His guests must be thinking: if he cannot control
himself, how can he control Scotland?
This is a turning point in the play, not only because it marks
a growing distance between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth but
also a growing distance between Macbeth and his subjects.
It is all downhill from here.
The guests start to leave and Lady
Macbeth appears to act in a very
natural way. She has been left very
much alone to sort this mess out
whilst her husband rants and raves.
After the guests leave, Macbeth states that:
It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood
We get the sense that perhaps he is beginning to realise that
murder will only lead to more murder, or that he will get his
comeuppance.
He lines Macduff up as the next person considered too much of a
threat to live. He has paid informers in Macduff's house and
decides to see the witches again to find out some more news. He
is now actively seeking evil out. Before, the witches came to
him. Now they don't need to. He is steeped in evil now.
More importantly, though, he clearly no longer needs his wife.
He doesn't turn to her or ask her what he should do
as he did before.
Macbeth admits he has come too far to try and change
for the better. He seems to have accepted in a worldweary way the fact that he is a murderer:
I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er
There is no turning back.
This scene ends on a quite pathetic
note when we compare them at the
start of the scene. They are reduced
here to two rather pathetic figures
just desperate to get a good night's
sleep.
We have seen the rise of Macbeth and now we see
the fall. This reflects the idea of crime and
consequence: what Macbeth does in the first half
of the play comes back to haunt him in the second.
Before Banquo's murder it is Lady Macbeth who
exults in evil and her husband who is fearful of the
consequences; after the assassination of Banquo
these positions are reversed.
Confronted by the spectre of his murdered victim he loses all
self-control, and before the assembled nobility breaks out into
speeches which must inevitably betray his guilt.
It is interesting to compare his behaviour immediately after
the discovery of the murder of Duncan with his actions in the
presence of Banquo's ghost. In the former case he retained all
his presence of mind; his speeches, though perhaps somewhat
exaggerated, conveyed the impression of wild grief for the
king's death, and his act of putting the bewildered grooms to
instant death was, perhaps, the most practical thing that he
could have done at such a time. In the banquet scene, after one
feeble effort to play his part, he loses consciousness of the
witnesses and speaks to the ghost as if they were alone
together.
Equally noticeable is the fact that in this
scene he passes altogether beyond his
wife's control. She had been able to
brace him up to the murder of Duncan
and to control and direct him in the
outburst of excitement which followed.
In this scene, however, she is utterly
unable to restrain him, and is forced to
listen helplessly to the ravings that
betray his guilty secret.