Summary: Act 2, scene 1
Banquo and his son Fleance walk in the torch-lit hall
of Macbeth’s castle. Fleance says that it is after midnight, and
his father responds that although he is tired, he wishes to stay
awake because his sleep has lately inspired “cursed thoughts” (2.1.8).
Macbeth enters, and Banquo is surprised to see him still up. Banquo
says that the king is asleep and mentions that he had a dream about
the “three weird sisters.” When Banquo suggests that the witches
have revealed “some truth” to Macbeth, Macbeth claims that he has
not thought of them at all since their encounter in the woods (2.1.19–20).
He and Banquo agree to discuss the witches’ prophecies at a later
time.
Banquo and Fleance leave, and suddenly, in
the darkened hall, Macbeth has a vision of a dagger floating in
the air before him, its handle pointing toward his hand and its
tip aiming him toward Duncan. Macbeth tries to grasp the weapon
and fails. He wonders whether what he sees is real or a “dagger
of the mind, a false creation / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed
brain” (2.1.38–39).
Continuing to gaze upon the dagger, he thinks he sees blood on the
blade, then abruptly decides that the vision is just a manifestation
of his unease over killing Duncan. The night around him seems thick
with horror and witchcraft, but Macbeth stiffens and resolves to
do his bloody work. A bell tolls—Lady Macbeth’s signal that the
chamberlains are asleep—and Macbeth strides toward Duncan’s chamber.
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Act 2, scene 1 →
Summary: Act 2, scene 2
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this
blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
As Macbeth leaves the hall, Lady
Macbeth enters, remarking on her boldness. She imagines that Macbeth
is killing the king even as she speaks. Hearing Macbeth cry out,
she worries that the chamberlains have awakened. She says that she
cannot understand how Macbeth could fail—she had prepared the daggers
for the chamberlains herself. She asserts that she would have killed
the king herself then and there, “[h]ad he not resembled / [her]
father as he slept” (2.2.12–13). Macbeth emerges,
his hands covered in blood, and says that the deed is done. Badly
shaken, he remarks that he heard the chamberlains awake and say
their prayers before going back to sleep. When they said “amen,”
he tried to say it with them but found that the word stuck in his
throat. He adds that as he killed the king, he thought he heard
a voice cry out: “Sleep no more, / Macbeth does murder sleep” (2.2.33–34).
Lady Macbeth at first tries to steady her husband,
but she becomes angry when she notices that he has forgotten to
leave the daggers with the sleeping chamberlains so as to frame
them for Duncan’s murder. He refuses to go back into the room, so
she takes the daggers into the room herself, saying that she would
be ashamed to be as cowardly as Macbeth. As she leaves, Macbeth hears
a mysterious knocking. The portentous sound frightens him, and he
asks desperately, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
/ Clean from my hand?” (2.2.58–59).
As Lady Macbeth reenters the hall, the knocking comes again, and
then a third time. She leads her husband back to the bedchamber,
where he can wash off the blood. “A little water clears us of this
deed,” she tells him. “How easy it is then!” (2.2.65–66).
Read a translation of
Act 2, scene 2 →
Analysis: Act 2, scenes 1–2
Banquo’s knowledge of the witches’ prophecy makes him
both a potential ally and a potential threat to Macbeth’s plotting.
For now, Macbeth seems distrustful of Banquo and pretends to have
hardly thought of the witches, but Macbeth’s desire to discuss the
prophecies at some future time suggests that he may have some sort
of conspiratorial plans in mind. The appearance of Fleance, Banquo’s
son, serves as a reminder of the witches’ prediction that Banquo’s
children will sit on the throne of Scotland. We realize that if
Macbeth succeeds in the murder of Duncan, he will be driven to still
more violence before his crown is secure, and Fleance will be in
immediate and mortal danger.
Act 2 is singularly concerned with the murder of Duncan.
But Shakespeare here relies on a technique that he uses throughout Macbeth to
help sustain the play’s incredibly rapid tempo of development: elision.
We see the scenes leading up to the murder and the scenes immediately
following it, but the deed itself does not appear onstage. Duncan’s
bedchamber becomes a sort of hidden sanctum into which the characters
disappear and from which they emerge powerfully changed. This technique
of not allowing us to see the actual murder, which persists throughout Macbeth, may
have been borrowed from the classical Greek tragedies of Aeschylus
and Sophocles. In these plays, violent acts abound but are kept
offstage, made to seem more terrible by the power of suggestion.
The effect on Lady Macbeth of her trip into Duncan’s bedroom is
particularly striking. She claims that she would have killed Duncan
herself except that he resembled her father sleeping. This is the
first time Lady Macbeth shows herself to be at all vulnerable. Her
comparison of Duncan to her father suggests that despite her desire
for power and her harsh chastisement of Macbeth, she sees her king
as an authority figure to whom she must be loyal.
