Macbeth, Part 2: Acts 2 and 3: Soliloquy, Verse and Prose, and Dramatic Irony

Hook: the knock at the door

In the middle of the night, right after the most terrible moment in the play, there's a knocking at the castle gate. It goes on and on. And then a drunk porter staggers out and starts... telling jokes. Why would Shakespeare put comedy right after a murder? That choice, like whether characters speak in verse or prose, is all about form.

Act 2 in brief

• 2.1: Late at night, Banquo admits he has dreamed of the witches. Alone, Macbeth sees a dagger floating before him: Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? A bell rings, the signal from Lady Macbeth, and he goes to Duncan's room.
• 2.2: Duncan is murdered offstage. Macbeth returns shaken, still holding the bloody daggers. He heard a voice cry Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep. Lady Macbeth takes the daggers back to Duncan's room, and a knocking begins at the gate. Alone, Macbeth asks: Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? She returns and says A little water clears us of this deed.
• 2.3: The Porter pretends to be the gatekeeper of hell. Macduff discovers Duncan's body. Macbeth kills the two guards, claiming fury and grief. Duncan's sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, fear for their lives and flee to England and Ireland.
• 2.4: Strange events in nature are reported (Duncan's horses ate each other). Suspicion falls on the sons for fleeing. Macbeth will be crowned. Macduff refuses to attend.

Act 3 in brief

• 3.1: Banquo suspects Macbeth: I fear / Thou play'dst most foully for 't. Macbeth, now king, fears Banquo and the prophecy about Banquo's sons. He hires murderers to kill Banquo and Fleance.
• 3.2: Macbeth tells his wife O, full of scorpions is my mind, but he keeps his plan secret from her.
• 3.3: The murderers kill Banquo. Fleance escapes.
• 3.4: At a royal banquet, Banquo's ghost sits in Macbeth's seat. Only Macbeth can see it. His terrified outbursts alarm the guests until Lady Macbeth sends them away. Macbeth admits: I am in blood / Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er. He decides to visit the witches again.
• 3.5 and 3.6: The witches' leader, Hecate, appears (many scholars think this scene was added by another writer). The lord Lennox speaks sarcastically about Macbeth's "innocence"; Macduff has gone to England to seek help.

Verse and prose: who speaks how?

Shakespeare uses three main forms of speech, and the choice tells you something:

1. Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter (ten syllables, da-DUM five times). Used by nobles and for serious, important moments: Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Duncan, Banquo.
2. Prose: ordinary sentences with no fixed rhythm. Used by servants and comic characters (the Porter), for letters, and sometimes for characters who are losing control of their minds.
3. Rhymed verse: the witches chant in short, rhyming lines with a DUM-da beat, like a spell. Rhyming couplets also often close a scene, giving it a firm ending: Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

The soliloquy as a form

A soliloquy lets the audience hear a character's private thoughts. In the dagger soliloquy (2.1), Macbeth argues with himself about whether the dagger is real: 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-oppressed brain? (sensible = able to be touched; heat-oppressed = feverish.) The form lets us watch his mind struggle in real time, so we understand him even as he moves toward murder.