Macbeth — Acts 2–3 Guilt, Blood and Banquo's Murder — AQA GCSE English Literature

SPEC 3.1.1 • MACBETH

Acts 2–3: Guilt, Blood & Banquo's Murder

Between Duncan's murder and Banquo's ghost at the banquet, Shakespeare stages the rapid consolidation — and immediate disintegration — of Macbeth's tyranny. The crime cannot be left in the past; it returns, ceremonially, in front of the court.

Why Acts 2–3 Are The Hinge

The murder is committed in Act 2 Scene 2. The banquet ghost arrives in Act 3 Scene 4. The two acts between are Shakespeare's most compressed period of dramatic argument:

Act 2's afterlife. The Porter's comic prose (2.3), the cosmos disordering itself (2.4), Macduff's "O horror, horror, horror!" — the play registers the murder across three different registers in the space of a few hundred lines.

Act 3's repetition. The same regicidal logic that took the throne must now defend it. Macbeth hires murderers; Banquo is killed; Fleance escapes. The crime is being repeated , but worse each time.

The marriage cracks. Lady Macbeth, the engine of Act 1, is excluded from Act 3 planning. The partnership that conspired in 1.5 has fractured by 3.2.

The Structural Argument

Shakespeare's argument across Acts 2–3 is that ambition has no stopping point. The single deed that was meant to deliver the throne instead delivers the necessity of further deeds — and the consequences of those further deeds break out, publicly, at the banquet. Conscience cannot be sealed off; the crime cannot be confined to its scene.

Key Terms For This Lesson

Definitions

Pathetic fallacy — where the natural world reflects human emotion or moral disorder. After Duncan's murder, the natural world disorders itself: horses eat each other, an owl kills a falcon, day becomes night.

Cosmic disorder — the Jacobean idea that disrupting the political order disrupts the natural and supernatural orders. Made literal in Act 2 Scene 4.

Foreshadowing — hints or partial revelations of events to come. The witches' second-round prophecies in 4.1 will foreshadow Macbeth's fall — but Act 3's "Fleance escapes" is already the play's first major foreshadow.

Symbolism — when a literal object carries weight beyond itself. Blood, sleep, and darkness are the play's three central symbols.

Dramatic irony — when the audience knows something a character does not. In 3.6 Lennox describes recent events in language whose surface praises Macbeth and whose subtext indicts him.

Prose vs verse — Shakespeare uses iambic pentameter for high-tragic register; prose marks lower-status or comic figures. The Porter speaks prose; the nobles speak verse. The form-switch is itself analytical evidence.

2.3 — The Porter: Comedy As Complicity

Shakespeare's first response to the regicide is, astonishingly, a comic prose monologue. A drunken porter answers the gate, imagining himself the gatekeeper of hell:

"Knock, knock, knock! Who's there, i' the name of Beelzebub?…

Knock, knock! Who's there, in th' other devil's name?" Porter · Act 2 Scene 3

Comedy That Becomes Weight

The scene is comic. That's its weight. Shakespeare drops a pocket of comic prose directly into the aftermath of regicide. The audience laughs — and a heartbeat later remembers what has just happened upstairs. The laughter becomes complicity. Shakespeare implicates the audience in the levity that hosts the horror.

Form-Switch As Method

The Porter speaks prose. Macbeth and the nobles speak verse (iambic pentameter). Shakespeare uses the formal shift deliberately: prose marks the lower-status comic figure; verse marks the high-tragic register. When Macbeth himself drops into prose in Act 5, the Porter's prose comes back as foreshadow.

The Porter's "Equivocator" — A 1606 Joke

One of the imaginary arrivals the Porter greets is an equivocator:

"Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven." Porter · Act 2 Scene 3

The Topical Reference

In March 1606 — months before Macbeth was first performed — the Jesuit priest Father Henry Garnet was tried and executed for his role in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. Garnet had defended equivocation as a moral practice. The Porter's joke would have been instantly recognised by a Jacobean audience as a topical jab.

Why This Matters Beyond The Joke

The Porter's "equivocator" is the play's second equivocator — the first being the witches with their "fair is foul." Shakespeare is layering the theme: equivocation is everywhere in this play, from the supernatural opening to the comic gatekeeper. The Porter's joke is the play's structural method made laughable.

"Every Noise Appalls Me" — The Disguise Failing

At the close of 2.2 — Macbeth has just returned from the murder, Lady Macbeth has gone to plant the daggers on the grooms, and the knocking at the gate begins. Macbeth, alone:

"Whence is that knocking? / How is't with me, when every noise appalls me?" Macbeth · Act 2 Scene 2

"Appalls" — Literally, To Be Made Pale

The verb "appalls" derives from Latin pallere — to grow pale. To be appalled is literally to lose colour. Shakespeare is doing two things at once: registering Macbeth's psychological terror, and quietly noting that his appearance — pale, drained — is now beginning to give him away. The disguise the "innocent flower / serpent" instruction was meant to provide is failing before the body has even been discovered.

When Macduff arrives moments later and finds the king, his response is ritual lamentation:

"O horror, horror, horror! / Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee!" Macduff · Act 2 Scene 3

The triple repetition of "horror" — beyond articulation. The deed has produced an event language itself cannot contain.

2.4 — Disorder In Nature

Ross and an Old Man discuss the strange events of the night Duncan died. Shakespeare uses the brief scene as a cosmological footnote:

"A falcon, towering in her pride of place, / Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at, and kill'd." Old Man · Act 2 Scene 4

ROSS: "And Duncan's horses… turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls… / Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would / Make war with mankind."

OLD MAN: "'Tis said, they eat each other." Ross and Old Man · Act 2 Scene 4

The Great Chain Visibly Inverts

An owl killing a falcon: lower preying on higher. Horses eating each other: nature consuming itself. Shakespeare is making cosmology comment on politics. The Great Chain of Being introduced in our opening lesson — God, King, nobles, animals — is now visibly inverting because the king at its top has been murdered. This is AO3 made textual: the context isn't background, it's in the play.

Pathetic Fallacy + Cosmic Disorder

"The heavens, as troubled with man's act, / Threaten his bloody stage" — Shakespeare attributes moral disturbance to the natural world. The night is dark because a regicide has occurred. Use this scene as evidence whenever a question asks about order vs disorder — Shakespeare gives you a scene that's nothing but that argument.

3.1 — "To Be Thus Is Nothing"

Now king, Macbeth opens Act 3 with a soliloquy that names the trap of tyranny:

"To be thus is nothing; / But to be safely thus. — Our fears in Banquo / Stick deep." Macbeth · Act 3 Scene 1

The Conditional Trap

"To be" the king is nothing — only safety in that being matters. Macbeth has obtained the throne, but possession without security is worthless. The line names what every tyrant discovers: the moment power is seized, the only question becomes how to keep it.

Macbeth's mind turns to Banquo, whose prophecy ("Thou shalt get kings") makes him an existential threat:

"Upon my head they plac'd a fruitless crown, / And put a barren sceptre in my gripe." Macbeth · Act 3 Scene 1

The Vocabulary Of Failed Reproduction

The adjectives "fruitless" and "barren" are the language of failed reproduction. Macbeth has the crown but cannot pass it on; his line stops with him. Shakespeare uses this vocabulary to register that his kingship has produced nothing but anxiety — the throne is sterile, the future is Banquo's.

3.2 — The Marriage Fractures

In 3.2 Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are alone for the first time since the murder. Macbeth's interior is no longer her domain:

"O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!" Macbeth · Act 3 Scene 2

An Intimacy Of Horror

The metaphor — scorpions, plural, in his mind — registers a kind of mental contamination Lady Macbeth does not share. He is now living inside a horror she opened the door to but did not enter. The intimacy he describes is his alone.

And then the line that marks the marriage's reversal:

"Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, / Till thou applaud the deed." Macbeth · Act 3 Scene 2

The Reversal

In 1.5 it was Lady Macbeth who briefed Macbeth on the murder. By 3.2 it is Macbeth excluding Lady Macbeth from his planning. "Be innocent of the knowledge" — the same innocence she once told him to perform in front of Duncan, she is now told to actually have. The diminutive "dearest chuck" patronises her. Shakespeare reverses the entire dynamic: she who once led is now told to wait, uninformed.

The Marriage Across The Play

Shakespeare's structural method: track the marriage's reversal as a four-stage arc:

Why The Trajectory Matters

This is one of the play's structural arguments — not a moment but an arc. Tracking it gives you forward momentum for any question about the marriage, ambition's costs, or character change. A Level 5/6 response names the trajectory; a Level 2/3 response describes individual scenes.

3.3 — The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Three murderers ambush Banquo and his son Fleance. Banquo's dying word is for his son:

"O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!" Banquo · Act 3 Scene 3

The Repeated Imperative

Three "fly"s in succession — the urgency embedded in the rhythm. Banquo's last act is to save his line. He dies protecting the prophecy the witches gave him: that his sons would be kings.

Fleance escapes. And here is the play's sharpest irony:

The Prophecy Macbeth Made Inevitable

The witches told Macbeth that Banquo's heirs would be kings. To prevent this, Macbeth orders Banquo and Fleance murdered. Fleance escapes. The prophecy is now structurally guaranteed — because Macbeth, by trying to kill Fleance, has identified Fleance's line as the threat to his throne. The witches' equivocal truth is being fulfilled by Macbeth's own defensive action against it. He has not avoided the prophecy. He has activated it.

3.4 — The Banquet: Conscience Goes Public

At Macbeth's coronation banquet — the very ceremony that ought to legitimise his rule — Banquo's ghost appears in his chair. Macbeth, in front of his entire court, addresses the vision:

"Thou canst not say I did it: never shake / Thy gory locks at me." Macbeth · Act 3 Scene 4

The Self-Incriminating Denial

The verb "canst not" is damning. Macbeth is defending himself against an accusation no one in the room has actually made. By denying a charge his court has not levelled, he exposes his guilt to people who did not yet know he was guilty. The disguise is over. The crime has gone public — not because anyone exposed it, but because conscience cannot stay interior.

Lady Macbeth tries to manage the spectacle:

"Are you a man?" Lady Macbeth · Act 3 Scene 4

The Echo

The same gendered manipulation she used in 1.7 — "When you durst do it, then you were a man" — is now insufficient. The lever that drove Macbeth to regicide cannot rescue him from its consequences. The marriage's tool no longer works.

The Banquet — Two Perceptions, One Room

Shakespeare splits the stage between what Macbeth sees and what the nobles see. The audience's vision is aligned with Macbeth's — they see what only he sees:

Worse Than The Dagger

The dagger in 2.1 was a private hallucination — Macbeth alone on the way to murder. The banquet ghost is the same method with witnesses. Shakespeare's argument: the consequences of regicide are not containable. What started in private exposes itself in public. Don't resolve the supernatural-vs-psychological ambiguity here either — both readings stay live, just as with the dagger.

WHW+C — The Banquet Scene

Question: Starting with this extract from Act 3 Scene 4, explore how Shakespeare uses the banquet scene to dramatise the public consequences of Macbeth's ambition. 30 + 4 marks

Constructed example in AQA's question format — not from a real past paper. The banquet scene has never been a named focus in the 2020–2024 archive.

Thesis

Shakespeare uses the banquet scene to argue that the consequences of ambition cannot be sealed off — Macbeth's interior crisis breaks out, ceremonially and publicly, at the very ritual meant to legitimise the rule his ambition secured.

W

What the writer does: Shakespeare stages Banquo's ghost in Macbeth's chair, visible only to Macbeth (and the audience), and has Macbeth address it in front of the assembled court: "Thou canst not say I did it: never shake / Thy gory locks at me."

H

How it works: The verb "canst not" is self-incriminating — Macbeth is denying an accusation no one in the room has actually levelled, exposing his guilt to a court that did not yet know he was guilty. By aligning the audience's vision with Macbeth's, Shakespeare makes us privileged witnesses to a hallucination the on-stage characters cannot see — a structural parallel to the dagger (2.1), but with the crucial difference that the dagger was private; the ghost has witnesses. The interior has become exterior.

W

Why it matters: Shakespeare uses the banquet — a ritual of communal order — to demonstrate that ambition's consequences cannot be confined to the criminal's interior. The crime contaminates the very ceremonies the crown is meant to administer. The disguise of "the innocent flower" that Lady Macbeth taught in 1.5 fails here, not in secret but in public; the marriage's lever ("Are you a man?") no longer works.

+C

Context: For a Jacobean audience who held the king's body and the body politic as theologically fused, Macbeth's loss of public composure is the loss of legitimacy itself — the natural disorder Ross described in 2.4 (an owl killing a falcon, horses eating each other) is now entering the social arena. The cosmic disorder has caught up with the political one.

Weak vs Strong — The Banquet Scene

Weak · Level 2/3

"Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost and is scared. This shows that he feels guilty about murdering him."

Problem: recounts the plot. "Feels guilty" is the kind of unsupported emotional claim AO2 cannot reward. No method named. No structural argument.

Strong · Level 5/6

"Shakespeare stages the haunting in front of an audience of nobles who cannot see what Macbeth sees. The hallucination dramatises the rupture between Macbeth's perception and the court's — but worse than the dagger, this hallucination has witnesses. The interior crisis ambition produces is now breaking out at the very ceremony meant to legitimise the throne; the disguise of the innocent flower is failing not in private, but in the open."

Scores because: names the structural method (haunting-with-witnesses); contrasts with earlier scene (the dagger) to show progression; identifies the ritual collapse as the analytical event; closing claim places moment in play's whole argument.

Examiner Alert & Common Errors

Examiner Report · Paper 1 · June 2024

"There is a slight tendency… for students to recount the narrative, rather than focusing more specifically on… what the writer does." Don't tell us what happens. Tell us what Shakespeare does.

Students often writeStronger version

"Macbeth becomes paranoid""Shakespeare structures Act 3 around the inevitable repetition of Macbeth's regicidal logic — to defend the crown he must continue to murder."

"Banquo's ghost shows Macbeth's guilt""The banquet scene fractures the public/private division kings must maintain; Shakespeare uses ambiguity (ghost or hallucination?) to align the audience with Macbeth at his moment of greatest exposure."

"Lady Macbeth and Macbeth grow apart""Shakespeare reverses the marriage's dynamic: where in Act 1 Lady Macbeth led, by Act 3 she is excluded from Macbeth's planning ('be innocent of the knowledge') — ambition has consumed the partnership it began with."

Practice — Close Analysis Drill

Macbeth's soliloquy at the opening of Act 3 Scene 1:

"To be thus is nothing; / But to be safely thus. — Our fears in Banquo / Stick deep."

Write one sentence that names a method, explains its effect on Macbeth's psychology as king, and links the moment forward to Banquo's murder.

Model

"Shakespeare uses the antithesis between 'to be thus' (being king) and 'safely thus' (being king securely) to register the trap of tyranny — Macbeth has achieved the throne but possession without security is meaningless, and the verb 'stick' (fears that 'stick deep') foreshadows the precise solution he will adopt: a weapon driven into Banquo. The grammatical hinge of the line is the murder it is about to commission."

Why

Specific method named (antithesis between two parallel phrases). Specific effect (trap of tyranny — possession requires defending). Forward link to the murder itself (the verb "stick" foreshadows the dagger's action). Method + effect + structural link in one sentence — Level 5/6 in shape.

Checkpoint

You should now be able to do three things:

1

Explain the Porter scene's tonal function — the comic prose drops directly into the aftermath of regicide; the audience's laughter becomes complicity. The Porter's "equivocator" is a 1606 Gunpowder Plot reference (Father Henry Garnet) and structurally rhymes with the witches' equivocation.

2

Track the marriage's reversal across the play — Lady Macbeth leads in 1.5 and 1.7, is an equal pragmatic partner in 2.2, and is excluded by 3.2 ("be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck"). Shakespeare uses the trajectory to argue that ambition isolates.

3

Apply WHW+C to the banquet scene — Shakespeare stages a haunting with witnesses, aligns the audience's vision with Macbeth's, and uses the ceremony of legitimisation to dramatise the public collapse of tyranny. Don't resolve the ghost-vs-hallucination ambiguity; the unresolvability is the point.

Next Lesson

Lesson 1.05 — Act 4: The Witches Return, the Apparitions & Macduff's Path. Shakespeare's second supernatural set-piece, the killing of the Macduff family, and the gathering of the forces that will end Macbeth's reign.