When Banquo is speaking to Macbeth he should be standing quite close to him as if telling him a secret that nobody else knows about. I would have his voice coming over very confidently to pick up the nervousness in Macbeth’s voice, which will show the contrast. Banquo is telling the truth so a confident voice will show this, ‘I dreamed last night of the three weird sisters: // To you they have showed some truth’. This is true but then Macbeth tells him the lie.
I would use partial light to so that the audience can see Macbeth’s facial expressions when he’s looking around. When he finishes his sentence I would have Macbeth looking off into the distance. He suddenly comes out of this trance and suddenly smiles at Banquo, he then says the line, ‘ . . . we can entreat an hour to serve’. Macbeth and Banquo are still friends so Macbeth can’t let on that he is going to kill the king soon.
When Macbeth is hallucinating is starts off by saying, ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me. The handle towards my hand? Come let me clutch thee’. At the start of the sentence he’s not sure whether or not it’s real. To show the audience that the dagger isn’t real, ‘Is this a dagger…’ he asks questions directed at him. He would have a confused look on his face, he’s not sure whether it’s real or not and is still a bit confused. I would have Macbeth standing in front of a background setting of the hall so that a projection can be cast onto this background. This would make it look like the dagger is directly in front of Macbeth. Macbeth still doesn’t know whether it is real or not and so starts to blink rapidly and starts to squint at it. He is getting nearer to the truth though, ‘…art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation?’ He admits to being fooled, ‘…eyes are made fools o’th’other senses’. Here, he would be frowning, but has a slight grin as he realises that the dagger is leading him to Duncan’s room. He realises that he has been tricked. When he says, ‘proceeding from the heart oppressed brain’ he should say it quietly at first but then begins to speak in a whisper, as if he doesn’t want to wake Duncan before he gets to his room
Then, as he draws his own dagger, ‘As this which now I draw’; he is speaking louder and more controlled as he thinks he’s doing the right thing. After the bell rings his voice quietens as he speaks to the sleeping Duncan ‘ Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell // That summons thee to heaven or to hell’. I would then have a curtain down between the Scenes and have some struggling and a then a final thud where the King finally hits the floor.
After he has killed the king he is overcome with so much adrenaline that he becomes confident. He has now killed and because he has killed, he is a man and is now King of Scotland and has all that he wanted.
Lady Macbeth is already on this stage talking to herself, ‘What hath made them drunk, hath made me bold; // What hath quenched them, hath given me fire’. She is talking but slurring her words as she has had too much to drink. When Macbeth comes on stage she hears someone and hides behind the bottle of alcohol she is holding. She cowers on the side of the stage.
When Macbeth first comes onto the stage he should be in the shadows at the top of flight of stairs, with only the daggers glistening in the light. I would use a spotlight to focus on Macbeth so that the daggers reflect the light again, this would allow the audience to see them better. The audience would then see the blood on the daggers and then the blood on Macbeth’s hands. I would also use make-up on his clothes so there are smears of blood on them. He then hides behind the wooden pillar and quickly whispers, ‘Who’s there? What ho?’. Macbeth is feeling guilty about the killing of the King. To show this I would have him answering the questions put to him by Lady Macbeth, quickly. Their conversation consists of mainly short questions and answers, ‘When? // Now // As U descended? // Ay // This is a sorry sight’. Both Macbeth and his wife speak these sentences and so I would have them looking directly at each other and now quite close to each other. They aren’t lying but are scared of getting caught when a dead King is only upstairs. They are both occasionally looking over their shoulders just in case anyone is to come near.
When Macbeth goes on to talk of not being able to say ‘Amen’ I would have him whispering this and being short of breath because now he is only just realising the reality of what he has just done. He grasps Lady Macbeth’s arm in a gesture of panic. Lady Macbeth just dismisses these things and her tone of voice is now very confident and she is ordering Macbeth around like a little child, ‘Go get // Go carry them’. She makes quick movements with her hands whilst she orders him around. Macbeth is still worried because he is hearing voices in his head saying, ‘Sleep no more // Glamis hath murdered sleep’. The King in a harsh, unforgiving voice would say these lines so that the audience get a feel for what Macbeth is going through. At the end of these lines when the voice is saying ‘…Glamis hath murdered sleep I would have the voice fading out gradually so that the line stays in the audiences’ heads. This will help the audience understand what sort of things Macbeth is going through at this part of the play. He is now scared and doesn’t want to take the daggers back into Duncan’s room, ‘I’ll go no more, I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on’t again I dare not’. Lady Macbeth gets annoyed by this, ‘Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers’. When she is speaking her voice should be firm and full of confidence. She knows that they have done the right thing. She is standing perfectly upright and leans in forward when she gets annoyed so to make Macbeth feel like a small child again. She has a completely different composure to Macbeth who is in the corner of the stage with his head down. He would be in the shadows with his back hunched up to show how scared he is of what might happen to him if he gets caught. She then explains what she will do, ‘I’ll gild the faces of the groom withal. She then leaves with her head held high as she pushes past Macbeth.
Macbeth is frightened of the knocking maybe because he thinks that people know what he has done, ‘Whence is that knocking? How is’t with me, when every noise appals me?’. He knows something is wrong and he wants the answers to everything. At this point I would have Macbeth almost5 leading with his wife looking directly into her eyes. However she would be looking away into the distance as if she’s no listening to a word he’s said.
When Macbeth is describing hands as, ‘…they pluck out mine eyes’ he would have his hands to his face as if to protect them from these hands. Macbeth wants to get the blood off his hands but he doesn’t know whether it will work or not, ‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood // clean from my hand?’. He would have his hands in a basin of water on the side of the stage and he would be scrubbing his hands with his nails to get the blood off his hand. Then Lady Macbeth would come over and although she wants the blood off her hands, she says, ‘My hands are of your colour, but I shame // To wear a heart so white’. She is saying that Macbeth is feeling too much guilt and that she can control her feelings for the dead King. She would then walk over to him and put her own hands in the bowl. She then turns around with confusion on her face because she doesn’t know what to do as the knocking continues. She then realises what she must do and starts to command Macbeth as a child again, ‘Get on your night-gown’. At the end of the scene Macbeth shows the audience that he’s feeling guilty, Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst’. He would have his hands to his face showing that he is grieving over the death. He would be standing away from his wife now
with a dreamy look in his eyes because he knows what he has done is impossible to un-do.
Although Macbeth is feeling guilty at the end of this scene the next scene proves that he’s over the murder when he performs the murder of Duncan’s guards. Afterwards Macbeth doesn’t seem to feel guilt any more and then gets is final punishment at the end of the play.
