Macbeth Act III | ISC Class 12 English Literature Notes

This note covers William Shakespeare’s Macbeth Act III: where the act sits in the play, its settings, a summary of all six scenes, Macbeth’s fear of Banquo, the hiring of the murderers, Banquo’s murder and Fleance’s escape, the banquet and the Ghost, Hecate and the Witches, Lennox’s talk of Macduff, the characters, dramatic techniques, imagery, themes, key quotations, difficult vocabulary and questions with model answers.

Where does Act III sit in the play, and where is it set?

At the end of Act II, Macbeth has been named king and has gone to Scone to be invested. Malcolm and Donalbain have fled under suspicion, and Macduff has gone to Fife instead of to Scone.

Act III opens with that change complete: Banquo addresses the absent Macbeth as “King, Cawdor, Glamis, all”. The problem is no longer how to gain the crown but how to keep it safely.

Which places does the act move between?

Settings. Four scenes take place in the royal palace at Forres (Scenes 1, 2, 4 and 6); Scene 4 is in a room of state laid for a banquet. Scene 3 is set in a park with a gate leading to the palace, and Scene 5 on the heath.

How much time does the act cover?

Time. Scenes 1 to 4 cover one afternoon and night. Macbeth asks whether Banquo rides “this afternoon”, the murderers wait while the west “yet glimmers with some streaks of day”, and after the feast Lady Macbeth says the night is almost at odds with morning.

Scene 6 does not say how much time has passed, but by then Macduff has already gone to England.

Note: Quotations in this note follow the Project Gutenberg text of the play. A school edition may differ slightly in spelling, punctuation or an occasional word; for example, some editions print “scotch’d” where this text has “scorch’d” in Scene 2. The student should learn the wording of the edition used in class.

What happens in each scene of Act III?

Scene 1: Banquo’s suspicion and Macbeth’s plot

Alone in the palace, Banquo fears that Macbeth played foully to win everything the Weird Women promised. He remembers that the same prophecy made him the root of many kings, and wonders whether it may come true for him too.

Macbeth enters as king and invites Banquo to a solemn supper. Banquo says he will ride with Fleance until supper time and promises not to miss the feast. Macbeth accuses Duncan’s sons, now in England and Ireland, of parricide.

Alone, Macbeth admits in a soliloquy that Banquo is the only man he fears, since the Witches hailed Banquo as father to a line of kings. He then persuades two Murderers that Banquo caused their misfortunes and orders them to kill Banquo and Fleance that night, away from the palace.

Scene 2: A divided partnership

Lady Macbeth sends a servant for the king. Alone, she says in four rhyming lines that nothing is gained when desire is satisfied without contentment. When Macbeth enters, she rebukes him for brooding and tells him that what is done is done.

He replies that they have only wounded the snake, not killed it, and envies Duncan, who sleeps well in his grave. He tells her to honour Banquo at the feast and says his mind is full of scorpions while Banquo and Fleance live.

She answers that they will not live for ever. Macbeth hints at a deed of dreadful note, to be done before the bat and the beetle begin their evening flight, but refuses to name it.

Scene 3: The ambush in the park

Near the palace gate, the two murderers are joined by a Third Murderer, who says Macbeth sent him. Banquo and Fleance enter with a torch, and the murderers attack as Banquo remarks that it will rain tonight.

Dying, Banquo urges Fleance to fly and says that he may take revenge. In the attack the light is struck out and Fleance escapes. The murderers admit they have lost the best half of their task and leave to report.

Scene 4: The banquet and the Ghost

At the banquet, Macbeth tells the lords to sit by rank. The First Murderer appears at the door with blood on his face and reports that Banquo lies dead in a ditch, but that Fleance has escaped.

The Ghost of Banquo rises and sits in Macbeth’s place. Not yet seeing it, Macbeth wishes Banquo were present; invited to sit, he finds the table full. Of those on stage, only he sees the Ghost. Lady Macbeth tells the lords he has had such fits since youth.

The Ghost vanishes, but returns when Macbeth drinks to the absent Banquo. When Ross asks what sights he means, Lady Macbeth sends the guests away at once.

Alone with her, Macbeth says blood will have blood. He notes Macduff’s refusal of his summons, mentions the paid servants he keeps in the nobles’ houses, and resolves to visit the Weird Sisters tomorrow.

Scene 5: Hecate and the Witches

On the heath, an angry Hecate scolds the three Witches for dealing with Macbeth without her, the mistress of their charms. She calls him a wayward son who loves only for his own ends.

She orders them to meet her in the morning at the pit of Acheron, where Macbeth will come to learn his destiny. She plans to raise spirits whose illusion will ruin him by making him overconfident. A song calls her away.

Scene 6: Lennox and another Lord

At Forres, Lennox talks with another Lord. In words that sound loyal, he reviews the convenient explanations of Duncan’s and Banquo’s deaths, and his questions make the praise of Macbeth sound like its opposite.

The Lord reports that Malcolm lives at the English court of the pious King Edward, and that Macduff has gone there to ask Edward to rouse Northumberland and Siward. The Lord adds that this report has so angered “the King” that he prepares for war; the text does not make clear whether this king is Macbeth or Edward. Macduff has refused a messenger, evidently Macbeth’s, with “Sir, not I”.

Lennox prays that an angel will reach England before Macduff, so that blessing may return to a country suffering “Under a hand accurs’d”.

How do the speeches of Scenes 1 and 2 reveal Macbeth’s new fears?

What does Banquo’s soliloquy leave unsaid?

Banquo suspects Macbeth, “I fear, / Thou play’dst most foully for’t”, but the word “fear” makes the charge tentative. The second half turns to hope: “May they not be my oracles as well”? His sudden “But hush; no more” closes the thought as the court enters.

Moments later he pledges duties knit “with a most indissoluble tie”, so he too now speaks one way in private and another in public.

Why does Macbeth fear Banquo above everyone?

Macbeth’s soliloquy opens with an antithesis, a balance of opposed ideas: being king is nothing unless he is safely king. He then lists what makes Banquo dangerous: a “royalty of nature”, a “dauntless temper” and a wisdom that guides his courage “To act in safety”.

The praise measures his fear. Macbeth feels his guardian spirit is “rebuk’d” by Banquo, as Mark Antony’s was said to be by Caesar. Macbeth names only “Caesar”; editors usually identify him as Octavius, the rival who later defeated Antony.

How do images of barrenness express his bitterness?

The centre of the speech is about children. The Witches placed a “fruitless crown” on his head and a “barren sceptre” in his hand, to be wrenched away by “an unlineal hand”, someone outside his family line. Symbols of royal power become signs of failure.

He counts the cost of Duncan’s murder in religious terms: he has given his “eternal jewel”, his soul, to “the common enemy of man”, the devil, all for Banquo’s heirs.

The speech ends in defiance: “come, fate, into the list, / And champion me to th’ utterance!” A list is the enclosed ground of a tournament. Macbeth, who welcomed the prophecy in Act I, now challenges fate to fight him to the death.

How does Macbeth manipulate the murderers?

Macbeth uses on the Murderers the method once used on him: he questions their manhood. When the First Murderer says “We are men, my liege”, Macbeth answers with a catalogue of dog breeds. All are called dogs, but a valued list ranks each by its gift, and men are ranked the same way.

He is “Masking the business from the common eye”, and Fleance must die too so that the work has no “rubs nor botches”, no flaws. The workmanlike phrase reduces a child’s death to tidy work.

What does Scene 2 show about the marriage?

Lady Macbeth’s lines alone, “Naught’s had, all’s spent”, use rhyme and compressed phrasing so that her disappointment sounds like a proverb. Yet with Macbeth she hides that doubt. Each partner now keeps something from the other.

Macbeth’s snake is “scorch’d”, injured but still able to bite. His envy of Duncan, who “After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well”, presents life as an illness and death as a rest he cannot reach.

His appeal, “Come, seeling night, / Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,” borrows from falconry: to seel a hawk was to stitch its eyelids shut. He wants darkness to blind pity and tear up the “great bond” that keeps him pale, whether Banquo’s hold on life or his own restraint.

Why are Fleance’s escape and the banquet the turning points of Act III?

What makes the ambush in Scene 3 significant?

The unexpected Third Murderer suggests that Macbeth does not fully trust the men he hired. The picture of the “lated traveller” hurrying to an inn gives the dusk an ordinary detail just before the violence.

Banquo’s calm “It will be rain tonight” is answered by “Let it come down.” The reply gives the weather a grim second meaning: what comes down is a storm of blows. His dying cry, “Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!”, spends his last breath on saving his son.

The struck-out torch matters practically and symbolically. In the darkness Fleance escapes, and the son through whom the prophecy to Banquo could come true survives. The plan fails over the son whose death Macbeth called “no less material” than his father’s.

How does Macbeth react to the news?

Had both died, Macbeth says, he would have been “Whole as the marble, founded as the rock”. Instead he is “cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d”, a run of alliteration in which each word closes the space around him more tightly.

He turns father and son into creatures: Banquo is the “grown serpent”, Fleance “the worm that’s fled”, who in time “will venom breed”. The image foresees danger from a child who is harmless now, and returns to the snake of Scene 2.

What does the Ghost do to Macbeth’s public role?

His first words to the Ghost, “Thou canst not say I did it”, come close to a confession in front of the lords. He means that he struck no blow himself, but the denial points towards a crime the lords know nothing about.

The Ghost also exposes a change in his courage. He would face a bear, a rhinoceros or a tiger, but not this “horrible shadow”. When it vanishes, he says “I am a man again”, as if his manhood depends on the Ghost’s absence.

The feast, a picture of order and fellowship, breaks apart. The lords sat by their “degrees”, their ranks; Lady Macbeth now tells them “Stand not upon the order of your going”, meaning that they should not wait to leave in order of rank.

Where does Scene 4 leave Macbeth?

Once the guests have gone, Macbeth turns from terror to calculation, determined to know “By the worst means, the worst”.

“We are yet but young in deed” is chilling because it treats all the killing so far as a beginning. The banquet has moved him from private fear to public strangeness.

How do the characters develop in Act III?

Macbeth: from hesitant murderer to lone planner

In Act I, Macbeth hesitated and needed his wife’s urging before killing Duncan. Now he plans Banquo’s murder alone, hires the killers, adds a third to join them and tells his wife nothing. Ambition has turned into a hunger for security that no single murder satisfies.

He is also practised in hypocrisy. He flatters Banquo as “our chief guest” while asking, as if casually, where he rides and whether Fleance goes too, questions that help plan the ambush.

Yet his conscience is not dead, though by the end he dismisses his vision as “strange and self-abuse”, a self-deception, the fear of a beginner who lacks hard practice.

Lady Macbeth: from leader to outsider

Lady Macbeth is no longer the planner. In Scene 2 she must ask for a few words with the king, is kept ignorant of his plan and hides her own dissatisfaction.

At the banquet she is still quick and practical. She covers for him by claiming he has had such fits since his youth, attacks his manhood as she did in Act I, and recalls the “air-drawn dagger” of Act II. Her last line, that he lacks sleep, sounds weary rather than scornful.

Banquo and Fleance: suspicion, silence and survival

Banquo keeps his suspicion to himself, perhaps from caution, perhaps from hope for his heirs. He dies protecting Fleance and returns as a Ghost that never speaks, so his silence continues in a frightening new form.

Fleance speaks no lines in Act III, yet his escape matters more than most speeches.

The Murderers, Lennox and the Lord

The two Murderers are men embittered by bad luck: one is reckless from the world’s blows, the other would stake his life on any chance to mend it. They accept Macbeth’s account of their past without question.

Lennox changes most visibly. In Scene 4 he serves Macbeth courteously at the table; in Scene 6 he speaks of “the tyrant’s feast”. The Lord also calls Macbeth “this tyrant”, a sign that loyalty among the nobles is breaking.

Hecate and the absent Macduff

Hecate treats Macbeth as a tool to be ruined through false confidence.

Macduff never appears in Act III, but his absence shapes its ending. He refuses Macbeth’s summons, stays away from the feast and goes to England, so that by Scene 6 he carries the hope of rescue.

Which dramatic techniques and imagery shape Act III?

Soliloquy and dramatic irony

Scene 1 places Banquo’s and Macbeth’s soliloquies close together, and Scene 2 gives Lady Macbeth four lines alone. Setting private thoughts beside public politeness lets the audience measure how far each character’s words differ from what they think.

Dramatic irony, where the audience knows more than the characters, runs through the act. Told “Fail not our feast”, Banquo answers “My lord, I will not”, and keeps his word as a Ghost. Macbeth charges Duncan’s sons with “cruel parricide”, a murder the audience knows he committed.

The Ghost is already seated, unseen by Macbeth, when he says the country’s honour would be complete “Were the grac’d person of our Banquo present”. Later his toast to “our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss” brings it back at once, as if summoned by the lie.

Verbal irony in Scene 6

Lennox uses verbal irony, saying the opposite of what he means. He praises Macbeth’s “pious rage” against the attendants and asks “Was not that nobly done?” The mocking logic criticises the king without a direct accusation.

The supernatural

The stage direction makes the Ghost rise and sit in Macbeth’s place, so the audience sees what the lords cannot, while hearing Lady Macbeth call it “the very painting of your fear”. Both readings stay open. In Scene 5, Hecate’s plan to raise “artificial sprites” prepares the audience to distrust what the Witches say next.

Imagery patterns across the act

Imagery in this act forms patterns that return from scene to scene.

Rhyme, rhythm and broken lines

Most of the act is in blank verse, unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter (ten syllables, five stresses), and this text prints no prose in it, unlike the Porter’s prose in Act II. Rhyming couplets end Scene 1, come just before the end of Scene 2 and mark Macbeth’s last decisions in Scene 4, giving them a hard, final sound.

Hecate speaks in rhyming couplets throughout Scene 5, mostly in shorter lines of about eight syllables, a chant-like sound that sets her apart. At the banquet, Macbeth’s speech breaks into exclamations such as “Behold! look! lo!” as order collapses.

What themes and tone emerge from Act III?

Security and the fear that follows power

Gaining power does not end ambition’s demands. Macbeth wants safety, and Hecate states the reverse danger: “security / Is mortals’ chiefest enemy”. In Shakespeare’s English, security could mean overconfidence as well as safety.

Each step Macbeth takes for safety creates new danger. Banquo’s murder lets Fleance escape, the banquet exposes his disturbance, and the nobles he distrusts, such as Macduff, turn against him.

Fate, prophecy and choice

Macbeth believes the prophecy about Banquo’s heirs, yet tries to defeat it by murder and challenges fate to combat. The act shows him choosing each crime himself, while Hecate’s plan suggests that supernatural forces will use those choices to destroy him.

Appearance and reality

The theme of appearance and reality grows sharper. Macbeth flatters Banquo while arranging his death and later toasts him as a missed friend; Lennox’s praise means its opposite.

Guilt and the troubled mind

Guilt takes visible forms: nightly dreams, a mind full of scorpions, a Ghost with “gory locks”. Macbeth’s belief that blood will have blood turns guilt into an expectation of punishment, which he answers with more violence.

Tyranny, disorder and the broken feast

The banquet should show a king united with his nobles; instead it ends in “most admir’d disorder”. Scene 6 names the result, a tyrant ruling a suffering country, and the Lord’s hope for food on tables and sleep at night shows how far the disorder reaches.

What is the tone of the act?

The tone moves from quiet suspicion to dread and then to defiance. Scenes 1 and 2 are tense and secretive; Scene 3 is swift and violent; Scene 4 swings between strained courtesy and terror. Scenes 5 and 6 close in threat and cautious hope.

Which key quotations from Act III should the student know?

A strong answer names the speaker and scene, explains the words, and links them to another moment in the act, as the notes below do.

“To be thus is nothing, / But to be safely thus.”

Macbeth, Scene 1: his first words alone as king. Link them with “cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d” in Scene 4 to show the safety he wants slipping further away.

“Upon my head they plac’d a fruitless crown, / And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,”

Macbeth, Scene 1: pair it with Fleance’s escape in Scene 3, which keeps the threat to Macbeth’s line alive.

“Naught’s had, all’s spent, / Where our desire is got without content:”

Lady Macbeth, Scene 2: her private disappointment. Contrast it with “what’s done is done”, said to Macbeth moments later, to show her hiding her doubt.

“O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!”

Macbeth, Scene 2: fear felt as stinging poison. The fond “dear wife” sits beside a plan he will not share with her.

“Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, / Till thou applaud the deed.”

Macbeth, Scene 2: the clearest sign that the partnership has changed. Use it to compare Act III with Lady Macbeth’s leading role before Duncan’s murder.

“But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears.”

Macbeth, Scene 4: his reply to news of Fleance’s escape, showing a king who feels imprisoned at the height of his power.

“It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood.”

Macbeth, Scene 4: spoken after the guests leave. The repetition makes revenge for murder sound like a law he cannot escape.

“I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

Macbeth, Scene 4: his choice to continue. Link it with “We are yet but young in deed” to show that more crimes are coming.

What questions does Act III leave open for Act IV?

Act III ends with several threads unresolved.

The act therefore closes with two opposed movements: Macbeth turning to the Witches for knowledge, and his opponents turning to England for help.

Glossary

• Sennet: A set of trumpet notes signalling a ceremonial entrance, sounded as Macbeth enters as king in Scene 1.
• Parricide: The murder of a father or close relative; Macbeth accuses Duncan’s sons of this crime in Scene 1.
• Gospell’d: So shaped by the Gospel’s teaching of forgiveness that one prays for an enemy; Macbeth uses it to taunt the Murderers.
• List: The enclosed ground where knights fought in tournaments; Macbeth challenges fate to enter it and fight him to the death.
• Seeling: Stitching shut the eyelids of a young hawk to tame it; Macbeth asks night to do this to the eye of day.
• Vizards: Masks; Macbeth says he and his wife must make their faces vizards that hide what is in their hearts.
• Eterne: Eternal or everlasting; Lady Macbeth says nature’s copy in Banquo and Fleance is not eterne, so they will die.
• Worm: A small snake or serpent in older English; Macbeth uses it for Fleance, who may grow dangerous in time.
• Avaunt: Begone, a command to leave at once, which Macbeth shouts at Banquo’s Ghost when it returns.
• Charnel houses: Buildings where bones from old graves were stored; Macbeth imagines them sending the buried dead back to the living.
• Augurs: Omens, or the art of reading omens from birds; Macbeth says such signs have revealed the most secret murderers.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: Lady Macbeth helps plan Banquo’s murder. Correct: Macbeth refuses to tell her, asking her to stay innocent of the knowledge until she can applaud the deed.
• Misconception: The Third Murderer is known to be Macbeth or another named character. Correct: The text says only that Macbeth told him to join the others; his identity is never revealed.
• Misconception: Banquo and Fleance are both killed. Correct: Banquo dies, but Fleance escapes, and the murderers admit they have lost the best half of their task.
• Misconception: Everyone at the banquet sees Banquo’s Ghost. Correct: Of those on stage only Macbeth sees it; Ross asks what sights he means, and Lady Macbeth says he looks on a stool.
• Misconception: Banquo openly accuses Macbeth of Duncan’s murder. Correct: He voices suspicion only in his soliloquy and then publicly pledges his duty to the king.
• Misconception: Lennox sincerely praises Macbeth in Scene 6. Correct: His praise is ironic; he speaks of the tyrant’s feast and prays for help to reach a country under a cursed hand.
• Misconception: The Caesar in Macbeth’s comparison is certainly Julius Caesar. Correct: The text names only “Caesar”; editors usually take him to be Octavius, Antony’s later rival.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. Macbeth says of Banquo in Scene 1: “’tis much he dares; / And, to that dauntless temper of his mind, / He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour / To act in safety.” State two qualities that Macbeth fears in Banquo and why together they make him dangerous. [2 marks]

1. Banquo is fearless: he has a dauntless temper and dares a great deal.
2. His courage is guided by wisdom so that he acts in safety, which makes him both bold and careful and therefore hard for Macbeth to outwit.

Q2. In Scene 2, MACBETH: “O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife! / Thou know’st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.” LADY MACBETH: “But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne.” Soon after, he tells her: “Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, / Till thou applaud the deed.” (i) What does the scorpion image convey? (1 mark) (ii) What does Lady Macbeth mean? (1 mark) (iii) What two things does his later reply show about the marriage? (2 marks) [4 marks]

1. (i) The scorpions suggest that his fears sting and poison his mind constantly, giving him no peace while Banquo and Fleance live.
2. (ii) She means that Banquo and Fleance do not hold their lives for ever; they are mortal and can be killed.
3. (iii) Macbeth now plans the murder without her and keeps her ignorant of it, so she is no longer his partner in planning.
4. (iii) His fond name, “dearest chuck”, shows affection remains, but it now sits beside secrecy, so the closeness of the marriage is weakening.

Q3. In Scene 3, BANQUO: “It will be rain tonight.” FIRST MURDERER: “Let it come down.” After the attack, THIRD MURDERER: “There’s but one down: the son is fled.” SECOND MURDERER: “We have lost best half of our affair.” The Witches had hailed Banquo as father to a line of kings. (i) Explain the double meaning of “Let it come down.” (1 mark) (ii) Why is Fleance the “best half” of the task? (2 marks) [3 marks]

1. (i) The Murderer seems to answer Banquo about the rain, but he means that the blows should now come down on Banquo as the attack begins.
2. (ii) Macbeth fears the Witches’ promise that Banquo’s descendants will be kings, so killing Fleance, the son, mattered at least as much as killing Banquo.
3. (ii) With Fleance alive, the son through whom the prophecy could come true survives, so Macbeth’s purpose in ordering the murder has failed.

Q4. At the banquet in Scene 4, Banquo’s Ghost, seen only by Macbeth, sits in his place. MACBETH: “Thou canst not say I did it. Never shake / Thy gory locks at me.” ROSS: “Gentlemen, rise; his Highness is not well.” LADY MACBETH: “Sit, worthy friends. My lord is often thus,” She adds that the fit will pass. (i) Why are Macbeth’s words dangerous to him? (1 mark) (ii) What does Ross’s response show? (1 mark) (iii) How does Lady Macbeth protect him, and what does this show about her? (2 marks) [4 marks]

1. (i) Denying that he did it before the lords suggests there is a crime he could be accused of, so his words come close to a confession.
2. (ii) Ross sees nothing and treats the outburst as illness, so to the lords the king appears unwell rather than haunted.
3. (iii) She tells the lords to stay seated and offers an explanation, claiming that his fits are a familiar condition that will soon pass.
4. (iii) This shows her quick self-control and her skill at managing appearances in public at a moment of crisis.

Q5. In Scene 6 Lennox speaks of Duncan’s attendants, killed by Macbeth: “How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight, / In pious rage, the two delinquents tear / That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep? / Was not that nobly done?” He adds that it was wise too, since their denials would have angered anyone. (i) What does “slaves of drink and thralls of sleep” suggest? (1 mark) (ii) Name Lennox’s technique and explain what it reveals about his attitude. (2 marks) [3 marks]

1. (i) The phrase pictures the attendants as overpowered by drink and sleep, which quietly hints that men in that state could hardly have murdered anyone.
2. (ii) Lennox uses verbal irony: words such as “pious rage” and “nobly done” praise Macbeth while meaning the opposite.
3. (ii) His remark that killing the men was wise, since they would have denied it, hints that Macbeth silenced them, showing Lennox’s suspicion and contempt for the king.

Q6. In Act I Macbeth hesitated before killing Duncan and needed his wife’s urging. In Act III he says “To be thus is nothing, / But to be safely thus”, greets Banquo as “our chief guest”, plans the murders of Banquo and Fleance alone, tells his wife to “Be innocent of the knowledge”, sees Banquo’s Ghost at the banquet, and resolves to visit the Weird Sisters, saying “We are yet but young in deed.” Explain six ways in which Act III shows Macbeth changing. [6 marks]

1. His ambition has turned into insecurity: having the crown is worth nothing to him unless he can hold it safely.
2. He now plans murder on his own initiative, choosing the victims and the time without needing anyone to persuade him.
3. He excludes his wife from his plans, so the partnership that drove Duncan’s murder has given way to secrecy.
4. He has become skilled at deception, flattering Banquo publicly as his chief guest while arranging his death.
5. His guilt still breaks through, since the Ghost terrifies him before his nobles and shows that his conscience is not dead.
6. He ends determined to go further, seeking out the Witches and treating his crimes so far as only a beginning.

Q7. In Act I Lady Macbeth urged Macbeth to kill Duncan. In Act III she must send a servant to ask for a few words with the king. Alone she says “Naught’s had, all’s spent”, but tells Macbeth “what’s done is done”. He keeps the plan against Banquo from her. At the banquet she excuses his fits, asks “Are you a man?” and dismisses the guests. Finally she tells him he lacks sleep. Explain five ways in which her role has changed. [5 marks]

1. Her private lines show that gaining the crown has brought her no contentment, a doubt she did not show while urging the murder of Duncan.
2. She hides this doubt from Macbeth and offers him firm comfort, so she now manages his moods instead of shaping his decisions.
3. She is shut out of the plan to kill Banquo and Fleance, and must send a servant to ask for a few words with the king.
4. At the banquet she still uses her old method of mocking his manhood, but it no longer brings him under control.
5. Her final concern that he lacks sleep is weary and protective, showing her reduced to watching over a husband she can no longer guide.

Q8. In Scene 4 the lords sit by rank. A Murderer reports at the door that Banquo is dead but Fleance has escaped. The Ghost sits in Macbeth’s place, seen only by him, as he wishes Banquo were present, and returns when he drinks to Banquo. Lady Macbeth dismisses the guests: “Stand not upon the order of your going”. Alone, Macbeth says “blood will have blood” and resolves to visit the Weird Sisters. Explain the dramatic effect of the scene in six points. [6 marks]

1. The orderly seating by rank presents a king united with his nobles, so its collapse later in the scene is all the more striking.
2. The Murderer’s report at the edge of the feast places the secret crime beside public celebration and unsettles Macbeth before the Ghost appears.
3. Macbeth’s wish for Banquo’s presence, spoken while the Ghost already sits in his place, creates strong dramatic irony: the murdered guest keeps his promise to attend.
4. Because only Macbeth sees the Ghost, his outbursts appear to the lords as illness or madness, exposing his disturbance in public.
5. The hurried dismissal of the guests, without regard to rank, turns the feast into disorder and reflects the disorder in the kingdom.
6. The private ending, with blood demanding blood and a visit to the Witches planned, shows Macbeth choosing to go on and builds suspense for what follows.

Key takeaways

• Act III shows Macbeth as king but not secure, fearing Banquo because the Witches promised the crown to Banquo’s descendants.
• Macbeth plans the murders of Banquo and Fleance alone, persuades the Murderers by questioning their manhood, and keeps his wife ignorant.
• Fleance’s escape and the Ghost at the banquet are the act’s turning points, leaving Macbeth confined by doubt and exposed before his lords.
• Lady Macbeth moves from leading partner to outsider, still able to cover for her husband but no longer able to guide him.
• Hecate plans to destroy Macbeth through false confidence, and Scene 6 shows Lennox, the Lord and Macduff turning against the tyrant.
• Imagery of blood, sleep, darkness, children, poison, sickness and masks links the scenes and expresses guilt, fear and disguise.
• Dramatic irony, soliloquy, the supernatural and rhyming couplets shape the act, and Scene 4 leaves Macbeth resolved to wade further in blood.

Test yourself

What does Banquo suspect at the start of Act III, and what does he hope?

He suspects that Macbeth played most foully to win the crown, and hopes the Witches’ promise that his own descendants will be kings may also come true.

Why does Macbeth say his crown is fruitless?

The Witches hailed Banquo as father to a line of kings, so no son of Macbeth will succeed him.

How does Macbeth persuade the Murderers?

He says Banquo caused their misfortunes, questions their manhood with a list of dog breeds, and promises them his love once Banquo is dead.

Who joins the two Murderers in Scene 3, and what does he say about himself?

A Third Murderer joins them and says that Macbeth told him to join them; nothing more about him is revealed.

Why is Hecate angry with the Witches in Scene 5?

They dealt with Macbeth in riddles and affairs of death without calling her, the mistress of their charms, and he does not love them.

According to the Lord in Scene 6, why has Macduff gone to England?

He has gone to ask King Edward to rouse Northumberland and Siward, so that Scotland may again have peace and safe feasts.