Block, SkipCaptcha, Automoderated users, edit
1,942
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 54:
Line 54: + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
→Act Two: Act Two
===Act Two===
===Act Two===
====Scene One====
====Scene One====
Banquo is with his torch-bearing son, Fleance, in the night. Banquo observes that heaven's candles - the stars - are not visible. He is having trouble sleeping, as some heavy summons disturbs him. When Macbeth and a servant arrive, he notes that Macbeth has not yet gone to bed, while King Duncan has. He gives Macbeth a diamond, courtesy of King Duncan. They remark about the witches, Banquo having thought of them, and Macbeth denying having thought of them.
Macbeth requests a drink from a servant and encouraged Banquo to sleep. When the servants, Banquo, and Fleance have left, Macbeth spies a dagger, and famously asks, {{cquote|Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. / I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. / Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible / to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but / A dagger of the mind, a false creation / proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?}} (44-51) He only speaks in fear of the bloody business to come, how wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep. When a bell rings, Macbeth is ready to kill.
====Scene Two====
Lady Macbeth has been drinking, to make herself stronger and braver, and drugged several of the king's guards so that they will be unaware and unalarmed of what is to come. She is disturbed by the shrieking of an owl and hears the chirp of crickets. When Macbeth enters, he says that the irreversible deed is done. Two people woke up, laughing, but prayed to themselves and returned to sleep. Macbeth found that he could not, in response to the prayers, say "Amen," and instead heard a voice say, "Sleep no more! Macbeth has murdered sleep." (47-48)
Lady Macbeth assures him that the voice, as it continued on, was a hallucination, and meant nothing, as she turns to cover the guards' daggers with blood and make them appear guilty. Macbeth believes that the blood which remains on his hands from the deed will never be removed, while Lady Macbeth states that a little water will do so.
====Scene Three====
The morning comes, and Macduff is awakened by a porter knocking at the door. He enters, and they speak, first of how drink fills one with lecherous desires but abates lecherous abilities, and then of Macbeth, who awakes, and then of how Macduff was ordered to wake the king. Lennox waits for him, noticing how rough the night was, how feverous the earth was, and how there never was a worse night in his life.
When Macduff returns, he shouts in horror, for the king has been murdered. They wake Lady Macbeth, then Banquo, then Malcolm and Donalbain (the two who had laughed during the night). Lennox assumed that the guards had killed him in their drunkenness, but Macbeth confesses to the deed. He continues emotionally of what brought him to it, but to distract the people, Lady Macbeth turns faint. All but Malcolm and Donalbain leave to attend to her, while those two plot to leave to England.
====Scene Four====
The Thane of Ross and and old man are talking about the night - how the sun was not risen though it was late in the day by the clock, and how a falcon was killed by an owl, how a king's horses had broken their stables and fled. Macduff arrives, and informs them that the king has been murdered, and that though Macbeth confessed, it is suspicious that Malcolm and Donalbain fled to England. In turn, Ross flees to Scone, and Macduff to Fife. The old man whispers a few wise words: {{cquote|God's benison go with you and with those / that would make good of bad and friends with foes}} (55-56)
===Act Three===
===Act Three===