Act 1, Scene 4

Forres. A Room in the Palace.

[Flourish. Enter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox, and Attendants.]
Duncan
258 Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not
259 Those in commission yet return'd?
Malcolm
260 My liege,
261 They are not yet come back. But I have spoke
262 With one that saw him die: who did report,
263 That very frankly he confess'd his treasons;
264 Implor'd your highness' pardon; and set forth
265 A deep repentance: nothing in his life
266 Became him like the leaving it; he died
267 As one that had been studied in his death,
268 To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd
269 As 'twere a careless trifle.
Duncan
270 There's no art
271 To find the mind's construction in the face:
272 He was a gentleman on whom I built
273 An absolute trust.—
[Enter Macbeth, Banquo, Ross, and Angus.]
Duncan
274 O worthiest cousin!
275 The sin of my ingratitude even now
276 Was heavy on me: thou art so far before,
277 That swiftest wing of recompense is slow
278 To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserv'd;
279 That the proportion both of thanks and payment
280 Might have been mine! only I have left to say,
281 More is thy due than more than all can pay.
Macbeth
282 The service and the loyalty I owe,
283 In doing it, pays itself. Your highness' part
284 Is to receive our duties: and our duties
285 Are to your throne and state, children and servants;
286 Which do but what they should, by doing everything
287 Safe toward your love and honor.
Duncan
288 Welcome hither:
289 I have begun to plant thee, and will labor
290 To make thee full of growing.—Noble Banquo,
291 That hast no less deserv'd, nor must be known
292 No less to have done so, let me infold thee
293 And hold thee to my heart.
Banquo
294 There if I grow,
295 The harvest is your own.
Duncan
296 My plenteous joys,
297 Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves
298 In drops of sorrow.—Sons, kinsmen, thanes,
299 And you whose places are the nearest, know,
300 We will establish our estate upon
301 Our eldest, Malcolm; whom we name hereafter
302 The Prince of Cumberland: which honor must
303 Not unaccompanied invest him only,
304 But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine
305 On all deservers.—From hence to Inverness,
306 And bind us further to you.
Macbeth
307 The rest is labor, which is not us'd for you:
308 I'll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful
309 The hearing of my wife with your approach;
310 So, humbly take my leave.
Duncan
311 My worthy Cawdor!
[Aside.]
Macbeth
312 The Prince of Cumberland!—That is a step,
313 On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
314 For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires!
315 Let not light see my black and deep desires:
316 The eye wink at the hand! yet let that be,
317 Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
[Exit.]
Duncan
318 True, worthy Banquo!—he is full so valiant;
319 And in his commendations I am fed,—
320 It is a banquet to me. Let us after him,
321 Whose care is gone before to bid us welcome:
322 It is a peerless kinsman.
[Flourish. Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 265historical topical
“nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it”
Malcolm reports that the condemned Cawdor confessed his treason openly, begged pardon, and died with composure. 'Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it' means his death was the one truly admirable act of a life otherwise marked by treachery. The idea belongs to the Renaissance 'art of dying well' (Latin: ars moriendi) — the belief that a composed, penitent death redeemed a man's reputation and signaled that he was at peace with God.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 270rhetorical device
“There's no art To find the mind's construction in the face”
Duncan means there is no skill or science that lets you read a person's true thoughts and intentions from their outward appearance. The word 'construction' here means 'interpretation' or 'what is being built inwardly.' The devastating dramatic irony is that Duncan speaks this line the moment before Macbeth enters: the man he will never be able to read is already walking through the door. Duncan trusted the first Cawdor and was deceived; he is about to trust the second.
TLN 300historical topical
“We will establish our estate upon Our eldest, Malcolm; whom we name hereafter The Prince of Cumberland”
Duncan formally names his eldest son Malcolm as heir by giving him the title 'Prince of Cumberland.' This is a crucial plot hinge: Scottish kingship in this period was not strictly hereditary — thanes could expect the throne to pass to the most capable nobleman of royal blood, and Macbeth, as Duncan's cousin and the kingdom's greatest general, had a realistic claim. Duncan's declaration that it will pass to Malcolm instead is the obstacle that sets Macbeth's ambition against law and legitimacy.
historical Holinshed's Chronicleshistorical The divine right of kings
TLN 308archaic vocab
“I'll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful The hearing of my wife”
A 'harbinger' was an official who rode ahead of a royal party to arrange lodgings and prepare the host's household for the king's arrival. By offering to go himself as harbinger, Macbeth is volunteering to precede Duncan to Inverness Castle to announce the visit and ready the welcome. The word carries an ironic weight the audience will feel: the man who goes ahead to prepare the king's lodging is the same man who will use those lodgings to murder him.
TLN 314rhetorical device
“Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires”
In this aside (spoken to the audience, not heard by the others on stage) Macbeth calls on the stars to extinguish their light so that neither heaven nor earth can witness what he is contemplating. 'Stars' in Elizabethan usage stood for divine providence and cosmic order — the fixed lights that, in the great chain of being, registered God's governance of the world. Macbeth's wish that they go dark is his first explicit prayer for the concealment of a crime not yet named. The invocation parallels Lady Macbeth's 'Come, thick night' soliloquy in the next scene.
historical The great chain of being (order and degree)
TLN 316syntax grammar
“The eye wink at the hand! yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see”
Macbeth is saying: 'Let my eye wink (shut itself) so as not to see what my hand is about to do — and yet let the hand do the deed that the eye will be too afraid to look at once it is done.' 'Wink' here means to close the eye deliberately, not to express friendliness. The sentence is doing two things at once: it names the act Macbeth refuses to name (murder), and it dramatizes the psychological split he is experiencing — the part of him that can conceive the deed trying to blind the part of him that would recoil from it.