˛ The opening of the second act focuses briefly on Banquo and his son Fleance to remind us of the witches’ prophecy, which Banquo has dreamed about, but which Macbeth claims to disregard. The scene lets us view Banquo as a father gently teaching his son about the order of the heavens even as he himself remembers “cursèd thoughts.” Banquo serves in the play as a double rebuke to Macbeth, both as father of a line of kings (and loving father) and as a man intrigued, even haunted, by the witches’ promises, but not acting upon them. (Shakespeare will also begin the third act in a similar vein, with Banquo musing: “Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all, | As the weïrd women promised, and I fear | Thou play’dst most foully for’t” [3.1.1-3]. Then he harks back to “his” part of the oracle: “that myself should be the root and father | Of many kings” [3.1.5-6].) But Banquo swears to keep his “bosom franchised [free from guilt] and allegiance clear” (2.1.26). In sharpest contrast and only a moment later, Macbeth is establishing the signal for Duncan’s assassination. By such careful parallels, oppositions, and reiterations, Shakespeare creates oppositional figures to Macbeth – Duncan and Banquo in the play’s first half, and Malcolm and Macduff in the second.
The second half of this scene (2.1.32-63) is filled by Macbeth’s own “cursed thoughts.” This second and longest soliloquy in the play suggests a very different Macbeth from just one scene earlier (1.7.1-28); that Macbeth all tormented yet trying to weigh the consequences, this Macbeth almost in a killing trance, imagining a “fatal vision,” “A dagger of the mind,” already drenched with “gouts of blood.” This Macbeth is a sleepwalker abused by “wicked dreams” who goes stealthily along a decline like a wolf, like a tyrant rapist (in the story of Tarquin, sex and politics already direly intermingled), “like a ghost.” The ringing bell that ends the scene is indeed a death bell, “a knell,” but its summons is not only for Duncan “to Heaven,” but also for Macbeth to hell. Voyager ˜Palex ˜¯Voyager ¯ˇPalex
