Macbeth - The Banquet Scene

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Macbeth

The Banquet Scene

When the guests enter, Macbeth says: "You know your own degrees ..." Later in the scene, after Macbeth's hysterical outbursts, Lady Macbeth says: "Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once." Macbeth, through the Witches' riddles and his wife's prompting, has broken the order in Scotland by murdering the good, kind King Duncan. Thus the Banquet Scene, with its formal entrances and hurried exits, symbolises much of the meaning of the play as a whole.
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The first disruption in the scene comes with the appearance of the First Murderer. Macbeth says, "There's blood upon thy face". The stain on the murderer typifies the bloodshed that Macbeth has and will shed in Scotland.

The murderer's news is bad for Macbeth. Banquo is dead but "Fleance is scap'd." This reminds Macbeth of the Third Witch's prophecy in I iii: "Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none".

Unaware of the irony in his words, Macbeth wishes that Banquo were present. The entrance of Banquo's ghost unnerves him. Lady Macbeth attempts to ...

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