Act 3, Scene 1

Forres. A Room in the Palace.

[Enter Banquo.]
Banquo
914 Thou hast it now,—king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,
915 As the weird women promis'd; and, I fear,
916 Thou play'dst most foully for't; yet it was said
917 It should not stand in thy posterity;
918 But that myself should be the root and father
919 Of many kings. If there come truth from them,—
920 As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine,—
921 Why, by the verities on thee made good,
922 May they not be my oracles as well,
923 And set me up in hope? But hush; no more.
[Sennet sounded. Enter Macbeth as King, Lady Macbeth as Queen; Lennox, Ross, Lords, Ladies, and Attendants.]
Macbeth
924 Here's our chief guest.
Lady Macbeth
925 If he had been forgotten,
926 It had been as a gap in our great feast,
927 And all-thing unbecoming.
Macbeth
928 To-night we hold a solemn supper, sir,
929 And I'll request your presence.
Banquo
930 Let your highness
931 Command upon me; to the which my duties
932 Are with a most indissoluble tie
933 For ever knit.
Macbeth
934 Ride you this afternoon?
Banquo
935 Ay, my good lord.
Macbeth
936 We should have else desir'd your good advice,—
937 Which still hath been both grave and prosperous,—
938 In this day's council; but we'll take to-morrow.
939 Is't far you ride?
Banquo
940 As far, my lord, as will fill up the time
941 'Twixt this and supper: go not my horse the better,
942 I must become a borrower of the night,
943 For a dark hour or twain.
Macbeth
944 Fail not our feast.
Banquo
945 My lord, I will not.
Macbeth
946 We hear our bloody cousins are bestow'd
947 In England and in Ireland; not confessing
948 Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers
949 With strange invention: but of that to-morrow;
950 When therewithal we shall have cause of state
951 Craving us jointly. Hie you to horse: adieu,
952 Till you return at night. Goes Fleance with you?
Banquo
953 Ay, my good lord: our time does call upon's.
Macbeth
954 I wish your horses swift and sure of foot;
955 And so I do commend you to their backs.
956 Farewell.—
[Exit Banquo.]
Macbeth
957 Let every man be master of his time
958 Till seven at night; to make society
959 The sweeter welcome, we will keep ourself
960 Till supper time alone: while then, God be with you!
[Exeunt Lady Macbeth, Lords, Ladies, &c.]
Macbeth
961 Sirrah, a word with you: attend those men
962 Our pleasure?
Attendant
963 They are, my lord, without the palace gate.
Macbeth
964 Bring them before us.
[Exit Attendant.]
Macbeth
965 To be thus is nothing;
966 But to be safely thus:—our fears in Banquo.
967 Stick deep; and in his royalty of nature
968 Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'tis much he dares;
969 And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
970 He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
971 To act in safety. There is none but he
972 Whose being I do fear: and under him,
973 My genius is rebuk'd; as, it is said,
974 Mark Antony's was by Caesar. He chid the sisters
975 When first they put the name of king upon me,
976 And bade them speak to him; then, prophet-like,
977 They hail'd him father to a line of kings:
978 Upon my head they plac'd a fruitless crown,
979 And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
980 Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,
981 No son of mine succeeding. If't be so,
982 For Banquo's issue have I fil'd my mind;
983 For them the gracious Duncan have I murder'd;
984 Put rancours in the vessel of my peace
985 Only for them; and mine eternal jewel
986 Given to the common enemy of man,
987 To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings!
988 Rather than so, come, fate, into the list,
989 And champion me to the utterance!—Who's there?—
[Re-enter Attendant, with two Murderers.]
Macbeth
990 Now go to the door, and stay there till we call.
[Exit Attendant.]
Macbeth
991 Was it not yesterday we spoke together?
First Murderer
992 It was, so please your highness.
Macbeth
993 Well then, now
994 Have you consider'd of my speeches? Know
995 That it was he, in the times past, which held you
996 So under fortune; which you thought had been
997 Our innocent self: this I made good to you
998 In our last conference, pass'd in probation with you
999 How you were borne in hand, how cross'd, the instruments,
1000 Who wrought with them, and all things else that might
1001 To half a soul and to a notion craz'd
1002 Say, "Thus did Banquo."
First Murderer
1003 You made it known to us.
Macbeth
1004 I did so; and went further, which is now
1005 Our point of second meeting. Do you find
1006 Your patience so predominant in your nature,
1007 That you can let this go? Are you so gospell'd,
1008 To pray for this good man and for his issue,
1009 Whose heavy hand hath bow'd you to the grave,
1010 And beggar'd yours forever?
First Murderer
1011 We are men, my liege.
Macbeth
1012 Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men;
1013 As hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
1014 Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clept
1015 All by the name of dogs: the valu'd file
1016 Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,
1017 The house-keeper, the hunter, every one
1018 According to the gift which bounteous nature
1019 Hath in him clos'd; whereby he does receive
1020 Particular addition, from the bill
1021 That writes them all alike: and so of men.
1022 Now, if you have a station in the file,
1023 Not i' the worst rank of manhood, say it;
1024 And I will put that business in your bosoms,
1025 Whose execution takes your enemy off;
1026 Grapples you to the heart and love of us,
1027 Who wear our health but sickly in his life,
1028 Which in his death were perfect.
Second Murderer
1029 I am one, my liege,
1030 Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
1031 Have so incens'd that I am reckless what
1032 I do to spite the world.
First Murderer
1033 And I another,
1034 So weary with disasters, tugg'd with fortune,
1035 That I would set my life on any chance,
1036 To mend it or be rid on't.
Macbeth
1037 Both of you
1038 Know Banquo was your enemy.
Both Murderers
1039 True, my lord.
Macbeth
1040 So is he mine; and in such bloody distance,
1041 That every minute of his being thrusts
1042 Against my near'st of life; and though I could
1043 With barefac'd power sweep him from my sight,
1044 And bid my will avouch it, yet I must not,
1045 For certain friends that are both his and mine,
1046 Whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall
1047 Who I myself struck down: and thence it is
1048 That I to your assistance do make love;
1049 Masking the business from the common eye
1050 For sundry weighty reasons.
Second Murderer
1051 We shall, my lord,
1052 Perform what you command us.
First Murderer
1053 Though our lives—
Macbeth
1054 Your spirits shine through you. Within this hour at most,
1055 I will advise you where to plant yourselves;
1056 Acquaint you with the perfect spy o' the time,
1057 The moment on't; for't must be done to-night
1058 And something from the palace; always thought
1059 That I require a clearness; and with him,—
1060 To leave no rubs nor botches in the work,—
1061 Fleance his son, that keeps him company,
1062 Whose absence is no less material to me
1063 Than is his father's, must embrace the fate
1064 Of that dark hour. Resolve yourselves apart:
1065 I'll come to you anon.
Both Murderers
1066 We are resolv'd, my lord.
Macbeth
1067 I'll call upon you straight: abide within.
[Exeunt Murderers.]
Macbeth
1068 It is concluded:—Banquo, thy soul's flight,
1069 If it find heaven, must find it out to-night.
[Exit.]

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Notes

TLN 915cultural context
“the weird women promis'd”
Banquo calls the witches 'the weird women': 'weird' derives from the Old English 'wyrd', meaning fate or destiny, so the phrase means women who control fate, not merely strange women. Holinshed, Shakespeare's source, calls them 'goddesses of destiny.' The word carries the full weight of prophetic power.
historical The weird sisters and Jacobean witchcraft
TLN 917archaic vocab
“It should not stand in thy posterity; But that myself should be the root”
'Stand in thy posterity' means 'continue in your descendants' — that is, the kingship will not pass to Macbeth's children. 'Root and father of many kings' means the ancestor from whom a royal line will grow. Banquo is thinking through the sisters' dual prophecy: Macbeth gets the crown, but Banquo's own bloodline gets the dynasty.
TLN 928archaic vocab
“we hold a solemn supper”
'Solemn' here means formal or ceremonial, not mournful. A 'solemn supper' is an official state banquet, conducted with proper ceremony. The word retains its Latin sense of 'annual, set, customary' (Latin sollemnis). Macbeth is establishing his court in Forres and marking it with a feast.
TLN 946historical topical
“our bloody cousins are bestow'd In England and in Ireland; not confessing Their cruel parricide”
Macbeth calls Malcolm and Donalbain, who fled Scotland after Duncan's murder, 'bloody cousins' — using 'cousin' loosely for any close kin, as was common. 'Parricide' means the murder of one's own father (Latin pater, father). Macbeth publicly frames the princes as their father's killers to justify his own claim, the same slander that drove them abroad.
TLN 973classical allusion
“My genius is rebuk'd; as, it is said, Mark Antony's was by Caesar”
In Roman belief, every person had a 'genius' — a guardian spirit or double that embodied his vital power. Macbeth feels his genius (his personal force) is cowed or checked by Banquo, just as a classical tradition held that Mark Antony's genius was overmatched and silenced by Octavius Caesar's. The comparison casts Banquo as the more powerful spirit who blights Macbeth's own.
classical Plutarch's Lives (North's Translation)
TLN 978rhetorical device
“Upon my head they plac'd a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand”
Macbeth piles up three images for the same grief: the crown that will bear no heirs ('fruitless'), the sceptre that begets no dynasty ('barren'), and the hand that is 'unlineal' — not of his bloodline — that will seize the throne after him. 'Gripe' means grip or grasp. The three parallel phrases accumulate the weight of a dynasty denied, and 'barren' is a charged word: it is the same emptiness he accuses Banquo's line of filling.
TLN 982archaic vocab
“For Banquo's issue have I fil'd my mind”
'Fil'd' means defiled or polluted, from the Old English 'fylan'. Macbeth is saying he has stained his soul for Banquo's children's benefit — implying that killing Duncan corrupted him morally, and yet the benefit flows to someone else's descendants. The word carries heavy moral weight: his mind has been made filthy by the act.
TLN 985biblical allusion
“mine eternal jewel Given to the common enemy of man”
Macbeth's 'eternal jewel' is his immortal soul. 'The common enemy of man' is Satan — the devil who is the shared adversary of all humanity. Macbeth is saying he has sold his soul to the devil in order to make Banquo's descendants kings, which makes the crime feel pointless even as he commits to it. The language is directly drawn from Christian theology familiar to any churchgoing Elizabethan.
TLN 988archaic vocab
“come, fate, into the list, And champion me to the utterance”
Macbeth challenges Fate itself to single combat. The 'list' is the enclosed fighting ground of a tournament or judicial duel. 'Champion me to the utterance' means 'fight this contest with me to the last extremity' — the French phrase 'a outrance' (to the uttermost) was the technical term for a duel fought to the death with no quarter given. He is defying whatever power ordained Banquo's descendants to rule.
TLN 1007biblical allusion
“Are you so gospell'd, To pray for this good man”
Macbeth asks the murderers sarcastically whether they are so thoroughly schooled in the Gospel's teaching about forgiving enemies that they would actually pray for Banquo, who has wronged them. The allusion is to Matthew 5:44 — 'pray for them which hurt you and persecute you.' 'Gospell'd' means 'taught by the Gospel'; Macbeth uses it contemptuously, as though Christian forgiveness is a form of weakness.
TLN 1012rhetorical device
“Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men; As hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clept All by the name of dogs”
Macbeth uses an extended comparison: just as all dogs share the same name yet differ in breed and worth — from noble greyhound to worthless mongrel — so all humans are listed in a catalogue as 'men,' but real distinctions of quality exist. 'Shoughs' are shaggy lapdogs (Icelandic origin); 'water-rugs' are rough-coated water dogs; 'demi-wolves' are half-wolf crossbreeds; 'clept' means called. The argument is designed to shame the murderers into proving they are men of quality, not the lowest kind.
TLN 1034archaic vocab
“So weary with disasters, tugg'd with fortune, That I would set my life on any chance”
'Tugg'd with fortune' means harassed, pulled about, or dragged around by Fortune — like a man being hauled by a stronger force. The First Murderer is describing a life of being knocked from one disaster to the next by bad luck. Macbeth has spent the previous exchanges telling the murderers that Banquo was to blame for their ruin; this is their response: they are already so far gone they are willing to gamble their lives.
classical Fortune and her wheel
TLN 1040archaic vocab
“in such bloody distance, That every minute of his being thrusts Against my near'st of life”
'Distance' is a fencing term for the measured space between opponents — the range at which a sword can reach. 'Bloody distance' means mortal, sword-fighting range: Banquo is so close to Macbeth that he is a constant lethal threat. 'Thrusts against my near'st of life' extends the fencing image: every moment Banquo lives is another sword-thrust at Macbeth's vital parts ('near'st of life' = most vital organs).
TLN 1057archaic vocab
“for't must be done to-night And something from the palace; always thought That I require a clearness”
Macbeth says the murder must happen tonight, away from the palace ('something from' = some distance from), and — he adds as a standing principle — he requires 'clearness': freedom from suspicion or implication. 'Clearness' here means clean hands, freedom from any trace of involvement that could incriminate him. He is not merely cautious; he has already learned, from Duncan's murder, that he needs complete deniability.