Macbeth I

Discuss some of the qualities that might make Act 3, Scene 4 (banquet at which Banquo’s ghost appears) dramatically powerful for Jacobean audiences and for modern audiences.

There are many factors which make this scene frightening, to both audiences now and those in Jacobean times. Set in a historical context, there was a great fear of ghosts, and the supernatural – which the reigning monarch James I found particularly disturbing. The placing of the scene adds dramatic power because of the fact that the audience becomes part of Macbeth’s hallucinations and Madness, as they, unlike the Lords at the banquet know of the terrible murder of Banquo, performed by Macbeth’s hired murderers in the previous scene.

For Jacobean audiences especially, people’s beliefs in hell and witchcraft would have made this scene all the more poignant. At the end of the scene, Macbeth says to Lady Macbeth that he wants to return to the weird sisters the next day:

And betimes I will – to the weird sisters.

More shall they speak. For now I am bent to know

By the worst means, the worst; for mine own good,

This is powerful because he emphasizes the fact that once he has become driven by the witches’

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We learn from Lady Macbeth that the night is “almost at odds with morning,” which adds suspense to the situation. influence, he cannot turn back and he is determined to know more of what they have to say. ” The serpent is meant to be the evil that has powered Macbeth and his wife to commit the terrible crimes in order to achieve success, a bit like Adam and Eve in the Bible.

Later in the scene, Lady Macbeth brings back the image from earlier in the play of the dagger which Macbeth had hallucinated:

“This is the very painting of your fear;

This is the air-drawn dagger which you said

Led you to Duncan. Get thee gone; tomorrow

We’ll hear ourselves again.

When the first murderer is explaining to Macbeth the murder of Banquo, he uses very horrible graphic images to describe how they killed him –

“…safe in a ditch he bides,

With twenty trenched gashes on his head,

The least a death to nature.

There are several powerful images in this scene. But it is also to encourage him that he should be ashamed of these flaws that he has, and be more like a man.

It is not only the language which makes this scene dominant. The fact that he is meant to be having a jolly banquet after that ordeal adds to the manicness of the whole scene. ” These words mean much the same thing yet still enforcing the misery of his slavery. ” In other words, Fleance is no threat to him now, but in time will become so. ”

He compares Banquo to a “grown serpent,” and Fleance to “the worm”, with “no teeth for th’present. My lord is often thus,

And hath been from his youth.

Approximate Word count = 1294
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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