DUNCAN’S MURDER
Macbeth is a tragic hero. At the beginning of the play he shows his courage and his loyalty to the king by fighting
and defeating the Danes. He is presented as a noble and good-natured man, but when tempted by the three
witches, he soon falls and, driven by his great ambition, commits crime after crime , transforming himself from
hero into villain.
Lady Macbeth initially comes across as a ruthless woman without scruples. She is stronger than her husband
and urges him to murder Duncan in order to become King. She acts out of ambition, but also out of love for her
husband. In the end the same sense of guilt which persecutes Macbeth also affects her and it is symbolised by
her persistent gesture of trying to wash her hands clean of blood, which eventually drives her mad.
The three witches appear several times in the play to predict Macbeth’s future and introduce an element of the
supernatural symbolising the obscure power of evil which tempts man. Their prophecies represent Macbeth’s
hidden desires.
Soon after killing King Duncan, Macbeth hears a noise, Lady Macbeth says it is an owl and the crickets, and then
asks him if he spoke. They are clearly nervous and feel guilty and afraid of being discovered. Macbeth can’t even
say "Amen", which is an affirmation after a prayer, when the guards ask for blessing (God bless us). It is also a
way of saying that he cannot join in with the communion of good people(lines 22,25-27). Lady Macbeth tells her
husband first to wash his hands, then to take the daggers, the murder weapons, back into the room and thirdly to
put blood on the grooms (lines 44-46), but Macbeth does not do as his wife advises, he refuses to go back into
the room where King Duncan has been killed and it is Lady Macbeth who finally does it .
Soon after the murder there are short lines and broken bits of dialogue between husband and wife. Both
characters nervously listen for sounds which could lead to their discovery. It is Lady Macbeth who decides to
frame the servants, and she who actually does it and then gets Macbeth to go back to their room , wash and
change. She seems to be the practical one, and her cold blooded planning and her remark "A little water clears
us of this deed"(line 66) makes her less sympathetic than Macbeth who has done the murder but is passionately
affected by it.
It is interesting to notice that Macbeth uses the word "deed" to refer to the murder, which is a word usually used
for a heroic act, although he perfectly knows that what he has done is terrible. And in fact his preoccupation with
sleep is both the acknowledgement of his lack of innocence and the end of natural living. He clearly feels
remorse, because he is genuinely emotionally distressed, "he is afraid to think of what he has done"(line 48).
However, his thoughts are for himself and not for his victim.
Dialogue is the most important feature of drama. It reveals some aspects of the character’s personality; it
establishes the relationship between the characters; it explains events which have taken place off stage; it builds
up the action.
The senses of sight and sound are important in this scene. The fear and tension is created by the short phrases.
The darkness and horror are accentuated by the reference to sounds and the knocking offstage. All we see is the
blood which symbolically remains on their hands. Macbeth refuses to look at what he has done which by
remaining unseen becomes even more horrible to imagine.
Imagery is a very important element in the play since it introduces the various themes.
SLEEP
In two speeches Macbeth repeats a verb frequently and this verb is "To sleep" (lines 30-33, 37-39). He refers to
sleep by means of a series of six metaphors:
That knits up the ravell’d sleave of care(line 33)
The death of each day’s life(line 33)
sore labour’s bath(line 33)
