Macbeth Act 3 scene 2

Summary

Act 3, Scene 2 opens with Lady Macbeth, attended by a servant. She learns that Banquo has left court but will return for the feast. After sending the servant to request an audience with the King, she delivers a short soliloquy expressing profound discontent: “Naught’s had, all’s spent, / Where our desire is got without content.” She concludes it’s “safer” to be the victim (Duncan) than to live in “doubtful joy.”

Macbeth enters, and she urges him to stop dwelling on the past, using the same phrase she employed after Duncan’s murder: “What’s done is done.” Macbeth rejects this platitude. In a tense and revealing speech, he says they have only “scorched the snake, not killed it,” and that they now live in constant fear and “restless ecstasy.” He envies the dead Duncan, whom “nothing / Can touch him further.”

Lady Macbeth, adopting a more practical and reassuring tone, tells him to appear “bright and jovial” for their guests. Macbeth agrees but insists she pay special, flattering attention to Banquo. He laments that they must now wear masks (“make our faces vizards to our hearts”). When she tells him to stop this line of thinking, he exclaims, “O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife! / Thou know’st that Banquo and his Fleance lives.” This is a direct confession of his torment’s source.

Lady Macbeth responds with a coldly pragmatic statement: “But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne” (they are not immortal). Seizing on this, Macbeth declares them “assailable” and hints at “A deed of dreadful note” to occur that night before the bat flies or the beetle hums. When she asks, “What’s to be done?” he pointedly shuts her out: “Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, / Till thou applaud the deed.”

The scene concludes with Macbeth invoking the coming night to “Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond / Which keeps me pale”—the bond being either the prophecy securing Banquo’s lineage or the bonds of natural law and friendship. He observes the arrival of night and its “black agents,” tells his speechless wife that “Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill,” and leads her out.

Analysis

1. Thematic Development:

• The Psychological Aftermath of Evil: This scene is a deep dive into the “doubtful joy” of tyranny. The promised rewards of the crown—peace, security, contentment—are utterly absent, replaced by paranoia, insomnia, and spiritual torment. Their gain is a hollow loss.
• Appearance vs. Reality: The need for deceptive performance is now a permanent, exhausting state (“make our faces vizards”). The feast they are planning is a complete façade, masking both their inner misery and the murder plot.
• The Inversion of Natural Order: Macbeth’s speeches are filled with images of unnatural time and darkness. He longs for the disruptive night to cover a second crime, showing his further descent into a world where the natural rhythms of day (goodness, peace) are rejected for the unnatural realm of night (evil, predation).

2. Character Development & Relationship Dynamics:

• Macbeth:

o   Mental Torment: His language is visceral and chaotic (“scorched the snake,” “full of scorpions,” “torture of the mind”). He is philosophically profound in his envy of the dead Duncan, showing a tortured awareness of his own damnation.

o   Taking Command: A pivotal shift occurs here. He no longer needs his wife’s goading; his ambition is now driven by autonomous fear and resolution. He is the plotter and the visionary of evil, invoking Hecate and Night itself.

o   Excluding Lady Macbeth: His refusal to tell her the plan (“Be innocent of the knowledge”) is a significant reversal of their “partners in greatness” dynamic. He now protects her from the details, isolating himself in his guilt and hardening his heart.

• Lady Macbeth:

o   Diminished Power: Her opening soliloquy reveals she suffers the same discontent, but she lacks Macbeth’s specific, driving vision. She reverts to managerial advice (“Sleek o’er your rugged looks”). Her single, coldly logical line about mortality (“nature’s copy’s not eterne”) is her last substantive contribution to the plot. From here, her role diminishes as she is shut out of his plans and consumed by her own latent guilt.

o   The Pragmatist vs. The Visionary: She represents a failed attempt to return to a mundane, practical reality (“What’s done is done”), but Macbeth is now operating on a different, more profoundly demonic plane, where past actions necessitate future horrors.

3. Key Symbols & Imagery:

• The Snake: Represents the surviving threat (Banquo, Fleance, and the wider consequences of their crime). It’s a potent image of a hidden, dangerous enemy that can regenerate.
• Scorpions in the Mind: An unforgettable metaphor for the stinging, poisonous, and ceaseless torment of Macbeth’s guilt and paranoia.
• Night & Darkness: Macbeth’s invocation to “seeling night” is a dark prayer. He calls for darkness to blind the compassionate day, so his “bloody and invisible hand” can work. Night is no longer just a cover but an active accomplice (“night’s black agents”).
• The “Great Bond”: This is a richly ambiguous symbol. It likely refers foremost to the witches’ prophecy that bonds the kingdom to Banquo’s heirs. It could also mean the bonds of natural law, feudal loyalty, or friendship—all of which Macbeth must “cancel and tear to pieces.”

4. Language & Contrast:

• Contrast with Act 1, Scene 5: The dynamic is inverted. Then, she was the fierce strategist reading his letters and hardening his resolve. Now, he is the one with the secret plan, and she is left to ask “What’s to be done?”
• Progression of “Done”: The word “done” echoes through their dialogue, charting their psychological state. From Lady Macbeth’s decisive “What’s done is done” (Act 3, trying to dismiss guilt) to Macbeth’s fatalistic “Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill,” showing his commitment to escalating evil.
• Macbeth’s Poetic Evil: His speeches have taken on a dark, lyrical quality. His call for night and description of the approaching “rooky wood” blend poetic beauty with horrific intent, illustrating the seductive yet terrible nature of his corrupted mind.

Act 3, Scene 2 is a crucial study in the corrosion of a relationship and a psyche. It confirms that the Macbeths’ crime has purchased only a hell of fear and isolation. The partnership that defined the first two acts fractures as Macbeth, now spiritually and mentally alone, charges ahead into deeper darkness. The scene masterfully transitions from the domestic unhappiness of the rulers to the looming, supernatural dread of the planned murder, tightening the tension before the act is carried out. It shows that the true consequence of murder is not the crown, but the unending, scorpion-filled torment of the mind.