Act 2 Scene 1, Part 1 Performed by Stephen Dillane, Fiona Shaw and full cast
Act 2 Scene 1, Part 2 Performed by Stephen Dillane, Fiona Shaw and full cast
Enter Banquo, and Fleance, with a Torch[-bearer*†] before him‡
Banquo
Fleance
Banquo
Fleance I take’t, ’tis later, sir.
Banquo‡
*Enter Macbeth, and a Servant with a torch†‡
Give me my sword –
Macbeth
Banquo
*[Gives Macbeth a diamond]
Macbeth Being unprepared†,
Banquo All’s well†.
Macbeth I think not of them;
Banquo At your kind’st leisure†.
Banquo So I lose none
Macbeth Good repose the while†.
*†[Exeunt] Banquo[, Fleance, and Torch-bearer]
Macbeth [To Servant]
Exit [Servant*]
Textual variants
2.1 ] F (Actus Secundus. Scena Prima.)
13 hath… pleasure] F (hath beene in vnusuall Pleasure); has been to night in an unusual pleasure Davenant
56 sure] F (sowre)
Explanatory notes
The scene takes place in Macbeth’s castle (fictionally, at Inverness). It is liminal: sufficiently out of doors for stars and moon to be looked for (1–2), sufficiently indoors for Banquo to get ready for ‘sleep’ (7).
0 SD Torch-bearer F’s SD might mean that Fleance holds a torch and precedes Banquo (him), but F’s punctuation apparently stipulates a torch-bearer (often referred to as Torch), making three actors in all. Compare 3.3.14 sd.
1 How goes the night How much of the night has passed? See OED Go v ii, quoting ‘How goes the time’ (John Marston, Antonio and Mellida (c. 1600), ed. Reavley Gair, 1991, 3.1.102). Macbeth virtually repeats the question, ‘What is the night?’ (3.4.126).
4–5 There’s… out Usually understood as: ‘There’s thrift (“husbandry”) in heaven, they have extinguished (put “out”) their stars (“candles”).’ Steevens3 compares ‘Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day / Stands tiptoe’ (Rom. 3.5.9–10); see also: ‘those golden candles fixed in heaven’s air’ (Sonnet 21.12) and ‘these blessèd candles of the night’ (MV 5.1.220). David-Everett Blythe, ‘Banquo’s candles’, ELH 58 (1991), 773–8, unconvincingly proposes the paraphrase ‘There’s concern (= “husbandry”) for humankind in heaven, they have displayed (put “out”) their candles/stars.’
5 Take… too Banquo, preparing for rest, disarms himself (4) and now removes some other accoutrement (his dagger or cloak, perhaps, or some ceremonial item associated with the state dinner he has just attended) or (as in some productions) hands Fleance ‘This diamond’ (15).
8 cursèd thoughts ambitious dreams (prompted by the sisters’ prophecies and Macbeth’s recent success); nightmares (about Macbeth’s possible crimes). Macbeth enters before Banquo chooses between these alternatives. See 20 and 50–1; ‘unstained thoughts do seldom dream on evil’ (The Rape of Lucrece 87); and Imogen’s bedtime prayer, ‘gods, / From fairies and the tempters of the night / Guard me’ (Cym. 2.2.8–10).
9 SD Enter… torch F’s placing of the SD may indicate the moment when the actors enter; Capell’s repositioning makes Banquo anticipate the entrance. F’s Torch might indicate a torch-bearer, but theatrical economy and F’s punctuation suggest one servant holding one torch. Compare 0 SD and n.
10–11 Challenge and response: Banquo is tense; Macbeth appears as either a ‘merciful power’ (7) or a ‘cursèd thought’ (8).
14 largess… offices gifts to the castle functionaries (Brooke).
15–16 ‘This diamond’ may be a ring or pendant. Banquo, companion to Duncan in 1.6, conveys a royal gift one might expect the king to deliver personally; compare 2.3.39 n., and Textual Analysis, pp. 276–7 below. The gift-giving emphasises Duncan’s false sense of security and affirms the social code Macbeth is about to break.
15 greets… withal salutes your wife with. The verb and its complement control both ‘diamond’ and ‘name’ (16).
16 shut up went to bed (in a curtained bed (see 51) within a chamber). The phrase could mean ‘concluded’ (i.e. ended his speech); the grammar is stretched to report what Duncan said (‘greets’) and then what he has done (‘shut up’). Later Folios make ‘shut up’ refer to an imaginary case for the diamond.
17 unprepared unready, unwarned. This easy social remark (the castle was not prepared to receive a king) anticipates the ways Macbeth and others do not foresee what is to come (see, especially, 2.3.119–27), but also momentarily suggests that Duncan is ‘unprepared’ for his murder.
18 Our An anticipatory royal plural; compare 22 and 5.6.4.
18 defect deficiency (Lexicon).
19 free… wrought liberally have worked.
19 All’s well All is not well, as Banquo’s next words testify.
22–4 Macbeth’s courtly politeness and the apparent royal ‘we’ intimate his sense of changed (or soon to be changed) status; his desire to talk about the witches contradicts ‘I think not of them’ (21).
24 If you would grant the time Granting or gaining time will become an important issue; Banquo’s descendants overreach Macbeth in time.
24 leisure See 1.3.147 n.
25 cleave to my consent agree (or adhere) to my feeling (or opinion); see OED Consent sb 6.
25 when ’tis when it (‘the time’ (24)) is.
28 franchised free. Banquo apparently wishes to remain free of obligation to Macbeth or of implication in his schemes.
29 the while in the meantime.
30 sir The respectful title introduces a note of subordination (perhaps prompted by 22–4) not present in 1.3.
31 drink An imaginary nightcap. As a codeword for murder, ‘drink’ is appropriate to the drunken grooms (1.7.63–8, 2.2.53), the drunken-hopeful Macbeth (1.7.35–8), and the speeches of the hungover Porter (2.3.1 ff).
32 bell A clapperless bell like a ship’s bell, or a gong (see ‘strike upon’); this bell is for routine internal communication (compare ‘alarum bell’ (2.3.68)). See W. J. Lawrence, ‘Bells on the Elizabethan stage’, Fortnightly Review 122 (July 1924), 59–70.
34 handle… hand This detail identifies the dagger as a weapon for, rather than a threat to, Macbeth and makes plain the fact that the dagger is invisible to the audience. As a ‘visual metonym’ (see Michael Hattaway, Elizabethan Popular Theatre, 1982, p. 65), the dagger might have reminded audiences of other literary and dramatic occasions when the secular or demonic realms offer weapons as temptations to despair and suicide – for example, the moment when Tamburlaine’s henchmen display a dagger to Agydas and he understands he must either commit suicide or be killed; see Tamburlaine, Part 1 3.2.88–106. Compare 64.
36 fatal deadly, mortal. The adjective is both active and passive: the vision is of mortality (Duncan’s death); the dagger is deadly to vision (Macbeth’s own). See 38n.
36 sensible perceptible.
37 as to sight The question depends upon an optical theory that vision was the product of beams radiated by the eye and reflected to it.
38 of the mind imaginary. The phrase also yields an image of a dagger in the mind, a keen knife that makes a moral and psychological wound (see 1.3.138 and 1.5.50). Encountering Caesar’s ghost, Brutus supposes ‘it is the weakness of mine eyes / That shapes this monstrous apparition’ (JC 4.3.276–7).
39 heat-oppressèd subdued, afflicted by heat (considered a quality of the human body and its ‘humours’). Macbeth responds to the vision analytically; his explanation is physiological, and the ‘heat’ might arise from ‘anger, or furious-ness… perturbations of the minde’ (Barrough, pp. 2–3).
40 yet still.
40 palpable tangible; perceptible (OED Palpable a 1–2).
42 Thou marshall’st You guide, usher. Compare ‘Our conquering swords shall marshal us the way’ (Tamburlaine, Part 1 3.3.148).
46 dudgeon hilt, handle. This line is the sole citation under OED Dudgeon sb1 2, and the word may have Scottish associations, since Cotgrave defines Dague à roëlles as ‘A Scottish dagger; or Dudgeon haft dagger’ (Capell, ‘Glossary’ in Notes, i, 21). The blood Macbeth now sees covers not merely the blade, but the handle (where it will stain his hand). See 2.3.109 n.
46 gouts spots, splashes. The word derives from French goutte (drop) ‘and, according to [nineteenth-century or earlier?] stage-tradition, [is] so pronounced’ (Clarendon).
47 thing i.e. a dagger. Macbeth corrects his ‘eyes’, the ‘fools’ or deceivers of his other senses (44), and says the dagger is imaginary, ‘no such thing’ (47).
49–64 ‘He that peruses Shakespeare [in these lines], looks round alarmed, and starts to find himself alone’ (Johnson).
49 half-world i.e. the hemisphere in darkness.
50 wicked dreams Compare Banquo’s fears (8–9).
51 curtained See 16n.
51 celebrates performs the rites; honours.
52 Hecate’s off’rings Offerings to Hecate, classical goddess of the moon and of sorcery. In Shakespeare’s plays, ‘Hecate’ is always disyllabic and stressed on the first syllable except at 1H6 3.2.64; F’s syncopation of ‘off’rings’ is not metrically necessary, and some editors print ‘offerings’. See 3.2.41 n.
53 Alarumed Warned, prompted to action; compare 1.2.0 sd n.
54 howl’s howl is.
54 his watch Murder’s time-piece; the wolf’s night-duty. On the second possibility, see ‘the Wolfe shal be watchman and keepe many wayes’ (Prophesie, sig. A3r).
55 Tarquin Sextus Tarquinius, the Etruscan prince who raped Lucretia, wife of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus. She committed suicide, and her relatives and friends led a rebellion (c. 509 bc) that overthrew the monarchy and established the Roman republic. See The Rape of Lucrece and Iachimo’s memory of ‘Our Tarquin’ when he prepares his mock-rape of Imogen (Cym. 2.2.12–14). The analogy here sexualises regicide and was available to contemporaries: addressing Shakespeare, Henry Chettle wrote, ‘Shepheard remember our Elizabeth, / And sing her Rape, done by that Tarquin, Death’ (Englands Mourning Garment (1603), sig. d3r).
55 strides long steps. Compare ‘turn two mincing steps / Into a manly stride’ (MV 3.4.67–8). F’s ‘sides’ has not been satisfactorily interpreted; it is also hard to explain as the copyist’s or compositor’s misreading of ‘strides’, but ‘Whoever hath experienced walking in the dark must have observed, that a man… always feels out his way by strides, by advancing one foot, as far as he finds it safe, before the other’ (Heath, p. 387). Elsewhere, ‘stalks’ (The Rape of Lucrece 365) and ‘slunk’ (Tit. 4.1.63) describe the way Tarquin approached Lucrece’s bed.
56 sure reliable, steady. OED Sure a and adv records ‘sowr’ (F: ‘sowre’; Q1673: ‘sowr’) as a form of ‘sure’. NS and Shaheen compare ‘He hath made the rounde world so sure: that it can not be moved’ (Ps. 93.2, Psalter version).
56 firm-set solidly positioned, stable.
58 prate blab, tell tales. Compare ‘the land bids me tread no more upon’t, / It is ashamed to bear me’ (Ant. 3.11.1–2). Speaking stones are uncommon; Grey (ii, 144) thought Luke 19.40 an analogue, but the context (telling the good word) is far from this one. Dent s895.1 (‘The stones would speak’) cites Gascoigne (1573): ‘When men crye mumme and keepe such silence long, / Then stones must speake, els dead men shall have wrong’, and Malone cites ‘yet will the very stones / That lie within the streetes cry out for vengeance’ (Warning, sig. g1r). See 3.4.123, where stones move and trees speak.
58 whereabout location, position (OED Whereabout 4, where this line is the earliest instance given of this interrogative word used as a noun).
59 take remove, withhold.
59 the present horror i.e. the silence that would be broken by speaking stones.
59 time time of night (compare OED Time sb 13); not, probably, the more general ‘circumstances, the times’ (OED Time sb 3d).
60 threat threaten. Macbeth accuses himself of bluster.
62 it Either (1) Lady Macbeth’s preparatory drugging of Duncan’s retainers, or (2) the regicide itself.
63–4 The bell has also summoned Macbeth to damnation.
Performance notes from Shakespeare in Production
Setting Macklin comments that, in previous productions of this scene, ‘the Servant comes on with two candles, he goes off & leaves his master in the dark that is a breach of manners even to absurdity. To remedy this the scene must lie in a Hall, or antichamber [sic] in which there must be a Table in the appartment [sic] and when the Servant goes off he must leave the candles on the Table, on which I think Macbeth must put them out’ (manuscript notes; Appleton, Macklin, pp. 171–2). In the event, Macklin staged the scene in ‘the inward quadrangle of an old Gothic castle’ (Morning Chronicle, 29 October 1773). Macready set it in a courtyard with a gateway in the centre at the rear surmounted by a heavy tower. There were two smaller doorways at the front, one on the left leading to Duncan’s bedchamber, the other on the right leading to Macbeth’s (Downer, Macready, pp. 324–5). A sketch in Macready’s Promptbook shows that there was also a flight of stairs on each side of the stage leading up to a gallery where there was a set of six doors, presumably leading to bedchambers. Theodore Fontane describes Phelps’s treatment of this scene in some detail: ‘We see a wide hall. The murder does not take place at the back of this, but very close to the audience. There are bed-chambers on either side of the hall: we see a few doors ajar. On the left, right down by the orchestra pit (from which the few fiddlers have left, moreover, so as not to distract us with their weary faces) is the bedchamber of Macbeth and his lady. Opposite, and just as close to the audience, is that of King Duncan. After Macbeth has opened the little door and entered the king’s room, the stage is empty for a good half-minute. Then at last Lady Macbeth darts out of her room [2.2.1]. After the first two lines … she breaks off with “Hark! Peace!” and steps towards the door through which Macbeth disappeared a minute ago. She opens it a little, and through the narrow crack a ray of pale light falls on the stage. This is the moment when she whispers the fearful words, “He is about it.” [2.2.4]. Everything combines to produce a profound sensation of horror’ (London Theatre, p. 84). Charles Kean also set the scene in a castle courtyard. There was a roofed gallery at the back above a Roman archway, and a round tower on either side of the gallery, each with a door (Promptbook). Irving’s set was ‘built in the style wherein Norman architecture began to put on decoration, but fully retained its rounded masses and its rugged strength. The rude entrance-hall in the rear … faces the spectators. Above the passage leading to it are murky arcaded galleries. On the right is a staircase. On the left is a round tower-like structure suggestive of a spiral stairway. Against this Lady Macbeth leans her back while the murder is in progress. The passage past it is the way Macbeth is marshalled by the dagger which he sees before him. The place is comparatively dark. The revellers have settled to their slumbers’ (Liverpool Daily Post, 31 December 1888). Immediately before this scene, Tree introduced the Witches who danced in the empty courtyard and vanished to the sound of thunder ‘as if they have entered to renew their spell before Banquo and Fleance come’ (Mullin, ‘Images of Death’, in Tardiff, Criticism, p. 178). In his production, stone steps rose to a large, heavy, iron-bolted door with steps arching up on either side of it. Beneath the arches were dark, cave-like spaces from which people entered in response to the alarum bell (2.3.74a) which hung nearby. ‘Around stands the grey, empty courtyard, grimly looming in the darkness, with only little slits of light here and there betraying the light within. All through the awful scene, this door, now closed, now ajar with the light streaming through, holds one’s imagination captive … At the side of the courtyard … is a little turret with a tiny side entrance leading up its winding stair. It is huddled against this little side entrance that … Macbeth sees his air-drawn dagger, while far above Lady Macbeth glides softly, silently to the great, lonely door – pushes it noiselessly ajar, slips in and as noiselessly shuts it again. It is from the little turret that Macbeth himself advances later on. He reaches the great door, stands trembling for a moment as that gaunt door shuts upon him. A moment after a muffled, gurgling groan tells one what it hides’ (Daily Chronicle, 6 September 1911).
0 SD Enter … In his manuscript notes Macklin says, ‘Banquo should begin the Second Act by coming out of the lower door P[rompt] S[ide] – as coming from the King, with a ring to Macbeth.’
4–5 Cut by Garrick.
9 SD Enter … Macready’s Servant was Seyton (Promptbook).
9–31 In a letter to Garrick, Arthur Murphy reminds him how he played this passage: ‘You dissembled indeed, but dissembled with difficulty. Upon the first entrance the eye glanced at the door [of Duncan’s bed-chamber]; the gaiety was forced, and at intervals the eye gave a momentary look towards the door, and turned away in a moment … After saying “Good repose the while” the eye then fixed on the door, then after a pause in a broken tone, “Go, bid thy mistress, &c.”’ (Garrick, Correspondence, vol. ii, p. 363; Sprague, Actors, p. 236).
15a (‘This diamond’) ‘Nay more’, Nunn.
33–61 ‘Garrick’s attitude, his consternation, and his pause, while his soul appeared in his countenance, and the accents that followed, astonished the spectators. The sequel was a climax of terror, till at last he finds it to be the effect of a disordered imagination, and his conscience forces him to say,
A German visitor records that ‘a certain foreigner in his box, though understanding not a word of English, was so moved by Garrick’s mere gesture in reaching out for the imaginary dagger … that he collapsed in a swoon’ (Kelly, German Visitors, p. 40). Macklin first took the dagger to be real, but then, suspecting that it was the product of his ‘heat-oppressèd brain’ (line 39), he closed his eyes, turned his head away, and held his forehead in his hand. At ‘Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going’ (line 42), he again believed it was real, but rejected the idea at ‘Mine eyes are made the fools o’th’other senses’ (line 44), only to be convinced of its reality at ‘on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood’ (line 46). Finally, in the following line (‘There’s no such thing’) he rejected it as a hallucination, and drew his own dagger (Morning Chronicle, 30 October 1773). Kemble’s interpretation was simpler. After ‘Get thee to bed’ (line 32), he yawned and stretched his arms but, on seeing the dagger, he started suddenly and, from then onwards, was convinced of its existence; ‘he followed it with his eyes steadily in all its evolutions through the air, and walked after it composedly to Duncan’s door’ (Times, 19 September 1811). Edmund Kean regarded the dagger ‘with a delirious and fascinated gaze; it grew more and more distinct to his disordered fancy; and at length he saw this “painting of his fear” palpable and distinct, imbrued with blood, and slowly guiding his halting footsteps to the door of Duncan’s chamber. Bewildered, terrified, brain-sick, he shrank from a belief in its reality, yet returned to it with a struggling conviction until it obtained full possession of him’ (Hawkins, Kean, p. 272). Macready slowly sensed the presence of the dagger of the mind wavering before him in the air. ‘He does not start at once as if it were “tangible to the eye”. Rather he keeps his eye constantly on the painting of his fear, recoiling and advancing to the dread object of his struggling excitement, and finally drawing his own dagger’ (Downer, Macready, p. 325). Phelps, ‘instead of at once starting at the ideal dagger, as if he was fully convinced of its appearance … kept his eye fixed on the “painting of his fear”, till the brain-sick, bewildered imagination made it real; shrinking from its belief, and returning to it with a struggling conviction, until it obtained full possession of him’ (Lloyd’s Weekly London News, quoted in Phelps and Forbes-Robertson, Phelps, p. 101). ‘When Charles Kean began “Is this a dagger …” the words were spoken under his breath up to “Thou marshall’st me”, when his voice was raised, and he spoke loudly to the end of the sentence. Before “There’s no such thing”, there was another pause; and when he spoke it was as though it was in anger with himself at giving way to childish fancies’ (Bede, ‘Macbeth on the Stage’, p. 21). Irving, ‘alone after bidding Banquo goodnight, … looked towards Duncan’s door, evidently intending immediate murder. The invisible dagger stopped him in his tracks: if this apparently supernatural weapon marshalled him the way that he was going, he realized with a start, perhaps it pointed the way to danger. Then, with a hollow laugh, he pulled himself together: “There’s no such thing.” Irving wrote, “Fear, which takes hold of him, he refuses to acknowledge”’ (Hughes, Shakespearean, pp. 103–4). ‘Macbeth [Olivier] is still giving last instructions to the servant. The man is still beside him when he sees the spectral dagger and checks at it like a pointer. With a terrible effort he withdraws his gaze for a moment and dismisses the servant; then with a swift and horrid compulsion swings round again. The first part of the dagger speech was spoken with a sort of broken quiet, only the sudden shrillness of “Mine eyes are made the fools o’th’other senses” [line 44] and “There’s no such thing” [line 47] revealing the intolerable tension that strains the speaker … Olivier dismissed the influence of evil in its physical manifestation only to be more strongly seized by it in his mind. The second part of the speech sank to a drugged whisper and, speaking, Macbeth moved, as in a dream, towards Duncan’s room, but with his face turned away from it. Tarquin’s strides were only dimly reflected in his dragging pace, and it was the already trodden stones behind him that Macbeth, with deprecating hand, implored to silence. It was this scene above all that brought the audience under the enchantment’ (David, ‘Tragic Curve’, pp. 128–9).
42 In his manuscript notes, Macklin says that he should drop the dagger on this line and take it up again after ‘There’s no such thing’ (line 47b).
43 A correspondent disagreed with Garrick’s emphasis on the word ‘was’ and suggested that he should rather stress ‘use’, to which Garrick replied, ‘I think, Sir, that both ye words Was and Use should be equally, tho’ slightly, impress’d as I have mark’d ’em – if you please to consider the passage, You will find, they are both Emphatical – The Vision represents what was to be done – not – what is, doing, or what had been done – but in Many Passages like this – the Propriety will depend wholly upon ye Manner of ye Actor’ (Letters, vol. i, p. 351).
60b–1 Cut by Garrick.
61 Cut by Nunn.
61 SD A bell rings Kemble introduced the sound of a clock striking two, rather than the ringing of a bell as in the original stage direction. ‘That it was so, is proved afterwards in the perturbed sleep of Lady Macbeth [5.1.30–1]. It is more awful and alarming, thus to startle silence by a deep-toned summoner, than to be brought back into petty life by the tinkle of a table-bell’ (Boaden, Kemble, vol. i, p. 415).
63 SD Exit Macready was so intent on communicating Macbeth’s reluctance to enter Duncan’s bed chamber that ‘when his body was actually off the stage, his left foot and leg remained trembling in sight, it seemed, fully half a minute’ (Coleman, ‘Facts and Fancies’, p. 223). ‘In contrast with the erect, martial figure that entered in the first act, this change was the moral of the play made visible’ (Marston, Actors, vol. i, pp. 76–7). At his exit, ‘the thunder, which had been low and muttering … now bursts with fury, and sheets of rain are heard to beat upon the castle walls’ (Downer, Macready, p. 326). At the peal of thunder, Forrest ‘starts back, gasps at the audience, slowly recovers, and disappears in the midst of the applauses of galleries and orchestra’ (Forster, Dramatic Essays, p. 32). In his later performances, the witches appeared above the battlements, as if coming ‘to preside and exult over’ the crime (Sprague, Actors, p. 241). As Phelps made his exit at the end of this scene there was a loud peal of thunder which, according to Fontane, seemed to be ‘directly over our heads’ (London Theatre, p. 81). Irving, as he went into the chamber, gave the impression that his feet were feeling for the ground, ‘as if he were walking with difficulty a step at a time on a reeling deck’ (Sprague, Actors, p. 241).
