Another room — "we have scotched the snake"

Another room in the palace. Lady Macbeth, alone, has summoned Banquo and learned he will be at the feast. She is in low spirits. The soliloquy she delivers is the play's first signal that the crown has not given her what she wanted. "Naught's had, all's spent, where our desire is got without content. 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy." She has gotten what she wanted; she has paid for it; she has no satisfaction. One of the play's most exact diagnoses of the trap of ambition fulfilled.

Macbeth enters. He has been pacing alone. She tries to lift him: what's done is done, the dead are at peace, you must play the king. He resists. "We have scotched the snake, not killed it." He envies the dead. Duncan, in his grave, "sleeps well; treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison, malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing can touch him further." Duncan is past fear. Macbeth is in fear constantly. The crown has converted him from a man with a desire into a man with an exposure.

She presses him: "what's to be done?" He will not tell her. "Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed." The endearment lands on a moment in which he is shutting her out. He invokes the night to come — "good things of day begin to droop and drowse, while night's black agents to their preys do rouse." The murder of Banquo is in motion as he speaks. The marriage that opened the play has shifted. They were partners; he is now operating without her. The first tremor of what will become her sleepwalking has been registered.