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Study Notes

Stage Presentation 2.i

Shakespeare Classroom

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The opening scenes of Act II concern the murder of Duncan. Shakespeare relies on a technique of elision where the audience sees 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. The effect is particularly striking upon Lady Macbeth, who claims that she would have killed Duncan herself, except that he resembled her father sleeping. This is the first sign in Lady Macbeth of any vulnerability, and foreshadows her eventual breakdown into guilt and madness.

Macbeth's trepidation about the murder is tested by two portentous symbols --the ringing of the bell and the knocking at the gate. (Indeed, this notion takes on ironic literalness when we realise that Macduff, who kills Macbeth at the end of the play, is the source of the knocking; thus Macbeth's death indeed stands embodied at the gate.) 

Scene 1

• Macbeth consciously embraces evil and it is his subconscious mind that provides the moral prompting, with Banquo the situation is reversed - he calls on heavenly powers to resist but when his subconscious takes over in sleep, the bad dreams come. Macbeth is sworn to murder and doubts are quietened in his new resolve.  He knows the difference between right and wrong but he cannot resist murder.
  
• Hypocrisy/deceit: Banquo is frank that he has thought of the witches whereas Macbeth denies and pretends that he has not.  Macbeth's lie is breathtaking in its bluntness.
  
• False wicked dreams /Troubled thoughts : Banquo (he is afraid to sleep because of the dreams they have stimulated and his nerves are on edge.  He calls for his sword despite the fact that he is in a supposedly friendly castle)  and Macbeth talks about 'curtained sleep' (line 51) which calls up an idea of the violation of comfort and security.
  
• Nature/natural feeling seems dead Atmosphere of suspicion grows - Banquo demanding his sword; Macbeth buying his loyalty but Banquomakes it clear that he will do nothing dishonourable and from this moment Macbeth must recognise Banquo as an obstacle; wolves/rape; Murder; Silence/darkness - soliloquy.
  
• Supernatural/ hallucination: The witches have had a malign effect upon Banquo as well as Macbeth; The knocking comes three times, with a sort of ritualistic regularity, and conveys the heavy sense of the inevitable; the gates will eventually open, and doom will eventually be allowed in.
  
• Suspicion and suspense mount Macbeth begs the Earth not to hear his footsteps (still has some feeling then as he would not care at the end of the play); Macbeth becomes aware of the dark, silent world enveloping him - evil taking over - milk of human kindness stopped?; Desperately nervous state; Procrastinating by talking; Bell = cue for murder: knell funeral. 
  
• Macbeth is left alone with his guilty conscience. He struggles with a vision of an imaginary dagger before him, just as he has been struggling with using a real dagger. He reaches for the image of the dagger several times, but it is not there, just as the crown will never really be there when Macbeth reaches for it. His conscience will never let him settle into the throne.
  

• Lady Macbeth enters and her pretence of heroic evil is beginning to give way (drink, jumpy, staccato rhythms); her pity is stronger than her cruelty as she could not kill Duncan as he reminded her of her father.  She cannot do the deed, whereas Macbeth, the man of action, can.  Tragic irony.
  
• Macbeth enters with daggers (foolish error) and he is jumpy.  Feels remorse and is told that he is foolish by Lady Macbeth who believes that she can banish conscience by an effort of will but the depth of Macbeth's guilt and the realisation that he has cut himself off from both God and future rest become movingly clear.  Two guests can pray and have easy access to God: he has forfeited that access.  He is cut off from God, goodness and the natural order of the world. He comes in covered in blood and carrying the two murder weapons, visibly and understandably shaken. He thinks he has heard a voice crying to him, "Sleep no more, Macbeth does murder sleep", a foreshadowing of his future sleeplessness. Lady Macbeth calls him a coward and takes the daggers back herself. As she departs, there is a loud and repeated knocking. This sound pushes Macbeth to a panic level. He looks at his hands and asks, "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?  As they leave, she warns her husband not to be "so poorly in your thoughts." His answer shows that his guilt and fear have already commenced.
  
• Lady Macbeth tells him that he must suppress these feelings of guilt or he will go mad: ironic world for what happens later in the play.  She tries to be practical - wash hands and smear grooms.  He cannot go back there so she does it.  Partnership through contempt
  
• Cut off from God and sleep, he will suffer an anguish of restlessness in a godless world without sense or order. 
  
• Macbeth alone again and evil has temporarily triumphed over good, but it will not go undetected.  Macduff and Lennox knock at the gate
  
• Macbeth has moral awareness and it is this that gives him tragic stature; Lady Macbeth does not have this vision.
  

• Compare and contrast the portrayal of Macbeth and Banquo in scene I
  
• How does Shakespeare create a mood of suspense and horror in these two scenes?
  
• Compare and contrast the portrayal of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in scene 2
  
• How does the character of Macbeth change throughout these scenes?
  
• Look at the language of the scenes.  What images particularly strike you and does the way characters speak reveal their state of mind?
  
• Discuss a stage presentation of these scenes *