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was going considerably smoothly up until this point at the banquet. Everything before this was quite relaxed until an excited mood starts to kick in during the banquet and it gets the audience excited and ready for more exciting stuff to happen. It sets an edgy unrelaxed and chaotic mood.
We learn that Macbeth is now at this stage very paranoid and scared. Scared that someone will find out about what he has done and scared of the consequences. He knows deep down that he will have to keep killing to cover all this up and that is what he scared of. He said he would rather face a tiger than to keep on fighting with these ghosts and apparitions.
Lady Macbeth constantly tries to reassure Macbeth that everything is all right and tries to calm down the lords who are present throughout all the commotion. She assures the worried lords that he will be fine saying “on a thought he will be alright again.”
Macbeth is loosing it and is saying things to the lords “which of you have done this” in a very accusing manner. Ross then seems very concerned for Macbeth as he says “what sights my lord,” because Macbeth is the only one in the room who can see this apparition. In other words Ross is asking what are you seeing in these hallucinations.
Macduff does not attend the banquo because he suspects Macbeth to be up to something mischievous and becoming king so quickly. This does not help Macbeth and Duncan’s grudge between each other as we see them fight later on in the play.
After the banquet Macbeth is talking to Lady Macbeth still very shaken and anxious by what happened he says to her “it will have blood they say and blood will have blood.” He also says, “I am in blood steeped so far that should I wade no more returning were as tedious as go o ‘er.”Which basically means that that he is in this too deep now and he cant get out of the trouble he has landed himself in. Which is the constant state of paranoia guilty conciseness and regret he is in and can’t get out of.
The symbolism in this scene during the banquet is the ghost of Banquo. It is a symbol of Macbeth’s guilt and the terrible thing he has done to his one time good friend Banquo. The blood also shows symbolism in a way that blood will have more blood. It might mean he may have to keep killing if he wishes to remain out of the list of suspects of murderers In other words he will kill any who oppose him or try to prove that he was the one who killed banquo and king Duncan.
There is a lot of dramatic effectiveness in this scene. The moods change very suddenly during the banquet scene when Macbeth was making a speech the last thing you thought you were going to see is the bloody ghost of Banquo sitting there calling out to Macbeth. And before this it was all merriment with the lords all gathered round the table eating drinking and chatting to each other and all of a sudden this happened.
There was also a lot of dramatic effectiveness in the language that was used such as “don’t shake thy gory locks at me,” “they say blood will have blood,” “ what man dare, I dare approach the rugged Russian bear, the armed rhino or the hyrcan tiger, take any shape but that my firm nerves shall never tremble.”
A lot of dramatic effectiveness was used to make this scene, powerful, shocking, gripping and in some parts frightening.
A Shakespearean audience would be very surprised and excited watching a play of Macbeth. This is because back then the upper rich class who by the way would have been the only kind of people who would have seen this play, would not be as used to bloody and violent scenes as there are in Macbeth. So Shakespeare was in a way quite ahead of his time when it came to writing plays.
On the other hand a modern audience would not in my opinion act too shocked at the frightening bits of this scene as modern society are more hardened toward violence.
This scene is one of the main “thrilling” scenes in the play and I think that is important because it adds that thrilling element that I think a lot of plays and films need to not stay too boring and one noted.
The Mcbeth play was written for the ruling king james who was in power at that time and for the rich audience of the shakespearian era.
