Act III: Scene 2
Summary
This short
scene allows the audience once more into the private thoughts of the murderous
couple, while holding the action momentarily in suspense. As the hired killers
make their way toward Banquo, Macbeth and his wife meet secretly. His wife
attempts to soothe his troubled mind but ironically feels the same doubts
herself. Killing the king has provided them with many more difficulties than
they first envisioned. To the astonishment of his wife, Macbeth reveals his
plan to murder Banquo.
Analysis
Dramatically
and poetically, this scene precisely mirrors Act I, Scene 5. Then, Duncan's
death was being plotted; now, the death is Banquo's (although Lady Macbeth is
initially unaware of this). In the earlier murder, Lady Macbeth was most in
command; in this murder, Macbeth is. Where formerly Macbeth was the one who
needed convincing, now the weaker role passes to his wife. Macbeth's line
"make our faces vizards (visors) to our hearts" recalls Lady Macbeth's
earlier words "[t]o beguile the time, look like the time." Similarly,
Macbeth's injunction to the spirits of darkness "Come, seeling night . . .
" is an echo of the speech of Lady Macbeth's beginning "Come, thick
night . . . ."
Despite
Macbeth's personal bravado, neither he nor his wife seems entirely at ease.
Lady Macbeth talks of her "doubtful joy" and Macbeth of his
"restless ecstasy." In the world that the Macbeths have created for
themselves, total peace no longer exists, and what has been achieved is only a
half-measure. Even the dead King Duncan is able to achieve more totally what
Macbeth never can: a respite from "life's fitful fever."
While Lady
Macbeth appears to be looking back at the previous murder, Macbeth looks
forward, anticipating the next murder, of which Lady Macbeth is not yet fully
aware. That distinction between their two states of knowledge allows
Shakespeare to play once more on the power relationship between husband and
wife. Here, then is yet another reversal of character, and it is shown in two
major ways: first, by Lady Macbeth's innocent-sounding questions and, second,
by Macbeth's adoption of animal imagery. In Act I, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth was
the one who spoke of "the raven" and "the serpent." Now
Macbeth takes on the same language of horror, imagining his mind to be
"full of scorpions," and speaking of the "bat" and the
"shard-born (dung-bred) beetle."
The most
powerful moments of the scene are the final ones in which Macbeth calls for the
cancellation of the bond between himself and the world. "Bond" is
more than simply a simile from the world of legal jargon. Just as Lady Macbeth
earlier wanted to lose her sex, Macbeth now desires to be rid of his humanity.
His direct connection with the natural world into which he was born threatens
to keep him "pale" or fearful. A final point to make about these
lines is the way in which the rhythmical stress falls unusually on the first
syllable of the word "cancel":
"And,
with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and
tear to pieces that great bond . . . ." (49-50)
Metrically,
as well as dramatically, Macbeth is moving inexorably toward his tragic
destiny. Meanwhile his wife, once so calm and collected, is losing that
composure. Macbeth's line "Thou marvell'st at my words" suggests, like
a stage direction, some moving response in her.
Glossary
scotch'd (13)
injured
both the
worlds (16) earth and heaven
foreign levy
(25) foreign invasion
lave our
honours . . . streams (33) show ourselves to be honourable by washing ourselves
in acts of flattery
vizards (34)
masks
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