Act 3, Scene 4

The same. A Room of state in the Palace. A banquet

[Enter Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Ross, Lennox, Lords, and Attendants.]
Macbeth
1163 You know your own degrees: sit down. At first
1164 And last the hearty welcome.
Lords
1165 Thanks to your majesty.
Macbeth
1166 Ourself will mingle with society,
1167 And play the humble host.
1168 Our hostess keeps her state; but, in best time,
1169 We will require her welcome.
Lady Macbeth
1170 Pronounce it for me, sir, to all our friends;
1171 For my heart speaks they are welcome.
Macbeth
1172 See, they encounter thee with their hearts' thanks.—
1173 Both sides are even: here I'll sit i' the midst:
[Enter first Murderer to the door.]
Macbeth
1174 Be large in mirth; anon we'll drink a measure
1175 The table round.—There's blood upon thy face.
Murderer
1176 'Tis Banquo's then.
Macbeth
1177 'Tis better thee without than he within.
1178 Is he despatch'd?
Murderer
1179 My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him.
Macbeth
1180 Thou art the best o' the cut-throats; yet he's good
1181 That did the like for Fleance: if thou didst it,
1182 Thou art the nonpareil.
Murderer
1183 Most royal sir,
1184 Fleance is 'scap'd.
Macbeth
1185 Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect;
1186 Whole as the marble, founded as the rock;
1187 As broad and general as the casing air:
1188 But now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in
1189 To saucy doubts and fears. But Banquo's safe?
Murderer
1190 Ay, my good lord: safe in a ditch he bides,
1191 With twenty trenched gashes on his head;
1192 The least a death to nature.
Macbeth
1193 Thanks for that:
1194 There the grown serpent lies; the worm that's fled
1195 Hath nature that in time will venom breed,
1196 No teeth for the present.—Get thee gone; to-morrow
1197 We'll hear, ourselves, again.
[Exit Murderer.]
Lady Macbeth
1198 My royal lord,
1199 You do not give the cheer: the feast is sold
1200 That is not often vouch'd, while 'tis a-making,
1201 'Tis given with welcome; to feed were best at home;
1202 From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony;
1203 Meeting were bare without it.
Macbeth
1204 Sweet remembrancer!—
1205 Now, good digestion wait on appetite,
1206 And health on both!
Lennox
1207 May't please your highness sit.
[The Ghost of Banquo rises, and sits in Macbeth's place.]
Macbeth
1208 Here had we now our country's honor roof'd,
1209 Were the grac'd person of our Banquo present;
1210 Who may I rather challenge for unkindness
1211 Than pity for mischance!
Ross
1212 His absence, sir,
1213 Lays blame upon his promise. Please't your highness
1214 To grace us with your royal company?
Macbeth
1215 The table's full.
Lennox
1216 Here is a place reserv'd, sir.
Macbeth
1217 Where?
Lennox
1218 Here, my good lord. What is't that moves your highness?
Macbeth
1219 Which of you have done this?
Lords
1220 What, my good lord?
Macbeth
1221 Thou canst not say I did it: never shake
1222 Thy gory locks at me.
Ross
1223 Gentlemen, rise; his highness is not well.
Lady Macbeth
1224 Sit, worthy friends:—my lord is often thus,
1225 And hath been from his youth: pray you, keep seat;
1226 The fit is momentary; upon a thought
1227 He will again be well: if much you note him,
1228 You shall offend him, and extend his passion:
1229 Feed, and regard him not.—Are you a man?
Macbeth
1230 Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that
1231 Which might appal the devil.
Lady Macbeth
1232 O proper stuff!
1233 This is the very painting of your fear:
1234 This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said,
1235 Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws, and starts,—
1236 Impostors to true fear,—would well become
1237 A woman's story at a winter's fire,
1238 Authoriz'd by her grandam. Shame itself!
1239 Why do you make such faces? When all's done,
1240 You look but on a stool.
Macbeth
1241 Pr'ythee, see there! behold! look! lo! how say you?—
1242 Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.—
1243 If charnel houses and our graves must send
1244 Those that we bury back, our monuments
1245 Shall be the maws of kites.
[Ghost disappears.]
Lady Macbeth
1246 What, quite unmann'd in folly?
Macbeth
1247 If I stand here, I saw him.
Lady Macbeth
1248 Fie, for shame!
Macbeth
1249 Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time,
1250 Ere humane statute purg'd the gentle weal;
1251 Ay, and since too, murders have been perform'd
1252 Too terrible for the ear: the time has been,
1253 That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
1254 And there an end; but now they rise again,
1255 With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
1256 And push us from our stools: this is more strange
1257 Than such a murder is.
Lady Macbeth
1258 My worthy lord,
1259 Your noble friends do lack you.
Macbeth
1260 I do forget:—
1261 Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends;
1262 I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing
1263 To those that know me. Come, love and health to all;
1264 Then I'll sit down.—Give me some wine, fill full.—
1265 I drink to the general joy o' the whole table,
1266 And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss:
1267 Would he were here! to all, and him, we thirst,
1268 And all to all.
Lords
1269 Our duties, and the pledge.
[Ghost rises again.]
Macbeth
1270 Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!
1271 Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
1272 Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
1273 Which thou dost glare with!
Lady Macbeth
1274 Think of this, good peers,
1275 But as a thing of custom: 'tis no other,
1276 Only it spoils the pleasure of the time.
Macbeth
1277 What man dare, I dare:
1278 Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,
1279 The arm'd rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger;
1280 Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
1281 Shall never tremble: or be alive again,
1282 And dare me to the desert with thy sword;
1283 If trembling I inhabit then, protest me
1284 The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow!
1285 Unreal mockery, hence!
[Ghost disappears.]
Macbeth
1286 Why, so;—being gone,
1287 I am a man again.—Pray you, sit still.
Lady Macbeth
1288 You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting,
1289 With most admir'd disorder.
Macbeth
1290 Can such things be,
1291 And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
1292 Without our special wonder? You make me strange
1293 Even to the disposition that I owe,
1294 When now I think you can behold such sights,
1295 And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks,
1296 When mine are blanch'd with fear.
Ross
1297 What sights, my lord?
Lady Macbeth
1298 I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse;
1299 Question enrages him: at once, good-night:—
1300 Stand not upon the order of your going,
1301 But go at once.
Lennox
1302 Good-night; and better health
1303 Attend his majesty!
Lady Macbeth
1304 A kind good-night to all!
[Exeunt all Lords and Atendants.]
Macbeth
1305 It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood:
1306 Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;
1307 Augurs, and understood relations, have
1308 By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
1309 The secret'st man of blood.—What is the night?
Lady Macbeth
1310 Almost at odds with morning, which is which.
Macbeth
1311 How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person
1312 At our great bidding?
Lady Macbeth
1313 Did you send to him, sir?
Macbeth
1314 I hear it by the way; but I will send:
1315 There's not a one of them but in his house
1316 I keep a servant fee'd. I will to-morrow,
1317 (And betimes I will) to the weird sisters:
1318 More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,
1319 By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good,
1320 All causes shall give way: I am in blood
1321 Step't in so far that, should I wade no more,
1322 Returning were as tedious as go o'er:
1323 Strange things I have in head, that will to hand;
1324 Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.
Lady Macbeth
1325 You lack the season of all natures, sleep.
Macbeth
1326 Come, we'll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse
1327 Is the initiate fear that wants hard use:—
1328 We are yet but young in deed.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 1163historical topical
“You know your own degrees: sit down”
'Degrees' means social rank. Elizabethan and Jacobean banquets assigned seating strictly by title and precedence; the host's opening instruction tells each guest to take the seat that matches their station, not simply to find any chair.
TLN 1168archaic vocab
“Our hostess keeps her state”
'Keeps her state' means Lady Macbeth remains seated in her ceremonial chair (her 'state' or throne-like seat of honor). Macbeth is explaining to the guests that she will not yet come forward to formally welcome them.
TLN 1177wordplay
“'Tis better thee without than he within”
Macbeth means the blood is better on the murderer's face (outside) than inside Banquo's veins (inside Banquo, i.e., still keeping Banquo alive). The terse line puns on 'without' and 'within' as both spatial prepositions and as 'lacking' vs. 'possessed of' blood — it is Macbeth's cold, compressed way of expressing relief that Banquo is dead.
TLN 1180archaic vocab
“best o' the cut-throats; yet he's good That did the like for Fleance: if thou didst it, Thou art the nonpareil”
'Nonpareil' (French: 'without equal') means peerless, without compare. Macbeth is telling the murderer that killing Fleance as well as Banquo would make him the best of all killers. The grim irony is that the murderer has to confess he has failed half the job.
TLN 1188rhetorical device
“cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in To saucy doubts and fears”
The three alliterating adjectives — 'cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd' — are a series of near-synonyms meaning shut in, penned, restricted. Shakespeare piles them together to convey the sensation of psychological suffocation. Macbeth contrasts this trapped feeling with the image of himself as 'whole as the marble, founded as the rock' — solid and immovable — that he had just described before Fleance's escape crushed that confidence.
TLN 1194wordplay
“the grown serpent lies; the worm that's fled Hath nature that in time will venom breed, No teeth for the present”
Macbeth calls Banquo the 'grown serpent' (dead and harmless now) and Fleance the 'worm' — a young snake with no fangs yet. In Shakespeare's time 'worm' commonly meant a small or young serpent. Macbeth is reassuring himself: Fleance can do him no immediate harm, though he concedes that in time Fleance will grow venomous — the witches' prophecy that Banquo's line will be kings still haunts him.
historical Banquo and the Stuart line (the show of kings)
TLN 1199archaic vocab
“the feast is sold That is not often vouch'd, while 'tis a-making, 'Tis given with welcome; to feed were best at home”
Lady Macbeth is telling Macbeth that a feast where the host keeps disappearing and no one warmly acknowledges the guests is no better than a commercial meal — 'sold' as in paid for at a tavern. The host's spoken welcome (the 'sauce' of ceremony) is what converts a dinner into an act of honored hospitality. Without it, the guests might as well have eaten at home.
TLN 1208archaic vocab
“our country's honor roof'd, Were the grac'd person of our Banquo present”
'Roof'd' means gathered under one roof. Macbeth is publicly saying that if Banquo were here, all of Scotland's most honored men would be present together. The phrase is deeply hypocritical: Macbeth knows Banquo has just been murdered on his order, and is performing grief and regret for his court. 'Grac'd person' — a person of grace and distinction — heightens the irony.
TLN 1221stage direction note
“Thou canst not say I did it: never shake Thy gory locks at me”
Macbeth is speaking to the Ghost of Banquo, visible to him but not to the other dinner guests. 'Gory locks' describes Banquo's hair matted with blood from the 'twenty trenched gashes' the murderer described. The ghost does not speak — it only nods or gestures, which Macbeth finds more unbearable than words. His plea 'thou canst not say I did it' reveals his guilty conscience: he technically did not wield the knife, but ordered the killing.
TLN 1243archaic vocab
“charnel houses and our graves must send Those that we bury back, our monuments Shall be the maws of kites”
A 'charnel house' is a vault or building where bones and bodies are stored — common in churchyards. 'Maws' are stomachs or gullets. 'Kites' are scavenging birds (related to hawks) that feed on carrion. Macbeth is saying: if the dead refuse to stay buried and keep returning, then there is no point building tombs — the dead might as well be left to the kite's belly as their only grave.
TLN 1250archaic vocab
“ere humane statute purg'd the gentle weal”
'Humane statute' means the laws of civilized society. 'Gentle weal' means the commonwealth, the well-ordered state — 'gentle' in the sense of gentle-mannered, civil, not savage. Macbeth is saying that in ancient barbaric times, before law tamed human violence, men were killed and that was the end of it: the dead stayed dead. The paradox he is tormented by is that civilization should have made the world safer, yet now the murdered dead come back.
TLN 1278classical allusion
“Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, The arm'd rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger”
Macbeth challenges the ghost: come back in any monstrous living form — a bear, a rhinoceros, or a tiger from Hyrcania — and he will fight it with his sword. Hyrcania was a region on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea (modern northern Iran), famous in classical literature as a land of savage beasts. For Shakespeare's audience, a 'Hyrcan tiger' was a byword for ferocity drawn from Virgil and from classical geography.
TLN 1305historical topical
“blood will have blood: Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak; Augurs, and understood relations, have By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth The secret'st man of blood”
'Blood will have blood' was a proverbial saying meaning that murder inevitably produces retribution. 'Augurs' are prophets or omens; 'understood relations' means the connections between signs and their meanings (how omens are interpreted). Macpies ('magot-pies'), choughs, and rooks are all corvid birds associated in folk belief with prophetic or sinister knowledge. Macbeth is saying that even natural things — birds, stones, trees — will eventually expose the most secret murderer.
biblical Cain and Abel: the first murder
TLN 1317historical topical
“the weird sisters: More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know, By the worst means, the worst”
Macbeth announces that he will return to the witches ('weird sisters') to demand more prophecies. 'Bent' means determined, resolved. 'By the worst means, the worst' means he will use any evil method to learn the worst possible truth — he has crossed a moral threshold where the manner of knowledge no longer matters to him.
historical The weird sisters and Jacobean witchcraft
TLN 1320rhetorical device
“I am in blood Step't in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er”
Macbeth compares himself to a man wading across a river of blood who has gone too far to turn back — going forward to the other bank is no harder than retracing his steps. The extended metaphor captures his moral logic: he has committed so many murders that stopping now would not undo the damage, so he might as well continue. It is one of the play's clearest statements of how crime becomes self-perpetuating.
historical The fall of princes (de casibus tragedy)
TLN 1325archaic vocab
“You lack the season of all natures, sleep”
'Season' here means the preservative or tempering ingredient — as salt seasons food to keep it from rotting. Lady Macbeth is saying that sleep is the natural preservative for all living things; without it, both body and mind deteriorate. The line recalls Macbeth's own earlier lament that he has murdered sleep ('Macbeth does murder sleep').