Macbeth – The Banquet Scene Essay Example

the King is experiencing is an illness that has been with him since he was a child and tells everyone to sit down again. She turns to Macbeth and rebukes him by saying "Are you a man? Lady Macbeth pushes him away for showing this fear and madness in front of their guests.

The ghost of Banquet leaves and Macbeth begins talking about the dead and the dead rising. He soon remembers who he is in the company of and calms himself down. He reassures the Lords and asks them to sit down. He then calls a toast to the joy of everyone and the absence of Banquet, who all the Lords think is alive. In the middle of the toast Banquet's ghost reappears and Macbeth turns violent and mad. On seeing this Lady Macbeths decides that the Lords have seen too much already and orders them to leave "for their own safety".

After the Banquet scene which in many ways represents the point of safe return for Macbeth, things move very quickly. As a King the Banquet scene has firmly established Macbeth as an unstable tyrant. Those who serve Macbeth now do so only out of fear. At the end of the Banquet scene Macbeth decides on two courses or action. Firstly, he must try to kill Mac duff. He sends murderers to his castle but Mac duff is not there. He has his wife, children and every person in the castle butchered. Secondly, Macbeth decides to go again to the Weird Sisters. They tell him a number of half truths.

Firstly, that he will never be defeated by any man naturally born by a woman. Secondly,

that he can only be defeated if a forest uproots itself and comes to his castle. Thirdly, the witches show him a series of glimpses into the future were all of Ban quos sons and their sons are Kings of Scotland. All of threes truths are only half-truths turning out to be true but very vaguely true, almost a lie. Mac duff was born with a c-section. When the army who are coming to kill Macbeth surround his castle they have with them branches form the forest as a camouflage.

Macbeth can change very quickly from a great and friendly host to a man of murder. He says "is he dispatched? " He is talking about Banquet, his best friend as if he were a piece of rubbish that you just throw away when you are finished with it. Banquet had been stabbed twenty times in the head. Lady Macbeth, throughout the play, calls Macbeth less then a man when she wants him to be angry or to stop doing something. Macbeth is a mighty warlord who is probably feared throughout Scotland, he hates to be called weak or anything less than what he is.

This Banquet was a complete disaster for him. It was supposed to show mighty people who he was and what he was like as a king. He had hoped that when they saw how wise and noble he was then they would return to wherever they were from and tell their people about him. Instead the Lords will never return to the Macbeth castle because they have seen him to be a complete lunatic who talks to chairs. If there were any

doubts that Macbeth had cheated his way to the throne before the Banquet scene then there is definitely not be a single doubt now.

The people will be thinking what have we done? What kind of maniac have we let rule our Country? Macbeth's power will never be the same again. People who may have been loyal to him before will now only look at him out of pure fear. I believe that the banquet scene is extremely important in the play because it is the first time everyone can see their king for who he is. And it is after this that Lady Macbeth begins losing control of Macbeth and is pushed away and not talked to. Without this scene I think that the play would not make as much sense as it does.