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' influence, he cannot turn back and he is determined to know more of what they have to say. We learn from Lady Macbeth that the night is "almost at odds with morning," which adds suspense to the situation. It is a time when things are most still, and dark – which is frightening – some audiences now may also realise that this time is a sort of no-man's land between the peacefulness of sleep, and a violent awakening. It is underlined by Macbeth's reference before, to blood – "It will have blood they say: blood will have blood," and various other eerie images such as stones moving, trees speaking, "maggot pies and choughs, and rooks..."
             The nature of the situation i...