Macbeth Analysis: Act 2, Scene 3,4

Macbeth Analysis: Act 2, Scene 3,4

Scene 3 is a rather busy scene, probably since Macbeth just killed Duncan and people are starting to hear the news and getting very confused. Another characteristic of this scene is that it uses a lot of ambiguous languages, which contains a historical context, an equivocation. This is a practice of lying in court about one’s religion by employing confusing and ambiguous language, one of the survival techniques of the time.

When the scene starts, a porter provides the audience with a light comedy, which in turn serves the job of heightening the suspense later on. He imagines himself as the porter of hell and jokes about what kind of people he would let in.

Before entering the chamber of Duncan, Lennox comments on the weather of the previous night. “The night has ben unruly: where we lay / Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say, / Lamentings head i’th’ air, strange screams of death, / And prophesying with accents terrible / Of dire combustion and confused events / New-hatched to th’ woeful time. The obscure bird / Clamoured the livelong night. Some say the earth / War feverous and did shake.” (II iii 55-62). These lines imply what has been happening the the King’s chamber, connected with the darkness and confusion.

When people find out that the King Duncan has been murdered, Macbeth acts and speaks in a way that is very shameless, much better than I thought. Judging by his behavior in the previous scenes, I thought he wouldn’t be able to hide that he is the murderer and let people notice it. Also, in the movie I saw in class, his facial expressions when he was washing his blooded hands in the water seemed extremely uneasy and nervous. However, he was in fact a good liar. When people around him are shocked by the blooded scene, Macbeth in turn asks, “What’s the matter?” (II iii 67), and later even say this: “Had I but died an hour before this chance, / I had lived a blessed time; for from this instant / There’s nothing serious in mortality - / All is but toys: renown and grace is dead, / The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees / Is left this vault to brag of.” (II iii 93-98) Lady Macbeth was going along with her huband as well, saying, “What’s the business, that such a hideous trumpet / Calls to parley the sleepers of the house? / Speak, speak.” (II iii 83-85)

However, Macbeth suddenly confesses that he was the one that killed the guards of the King’s chamber. “O yet I do repent me of my fury, / That I did kill them.” (II iii 108-109) Here, Lady Macbeth faints and Macbeth is trapped in the danger of being accused of killing Duncan, but he intelligently escapes this crisis by explaining that he could not act otherwise when he saw the king.

In the Scene 4, Thane of Ross encounters an Old Man, who tells us what have happened in the past, with the experiences out of age and tradition. The Old Man delivers the news that the kingship has passed to Macebth. When he does this, he compares Duncan to a falcon, and Macbeth to a mousing owl. “A falcon tow’ring in her pride of place / Was by a mousing owl hawked at, and killed.” (II iv 12-13) This line hints the historical context again, of the natural orders of the time, which could never break. In other words, Macbeth has not only just killed the King of a nation, but disrupted the whole system the Heaven’s orders and confused it. On this topic, the lines “The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood / Is stopped, the very source of it is stopped.” (II iii 100-101) also imply the collapse of the established orders.