Forres — Lennox and the Lord

A private room in the palace. Lennox and another lord — unnamed in most editions — are speaking with the kind of caution the times require. The official line on recent events is, increasingly, hard to swallow. Lennox runs through the catalogue with sarcasm carefully banked. Duncan was pitied by Macbeth — after Macbeth had killed him, of course. Banquo walked out late at night and was killed; the obvious conclusion is that Fleance, who fled, must have done it. Malcolm and Donalbain killed their father — what monsters. "How it did grieve Macbeth," Lennox says, "did he not straight, in pious rage, the two delinquents tear?" The sarcasm is unmistakable.

The other lord picks up the political news. Macduff has gone to England. Malcolm is at the court of Edward the Confessor, "the most pious Edward, with such grace that the malevolence of fortune nothing takes from his high respect." Edward, the good English king, is a contrast Shakespeare draws deliberately to Macbeth. Macduff has gone there to ask the king's help and to enlist Siward of Northumberland; an army is being assembled. "Some holy angel fly to the court of England, and unfold his message ere he come."

Macbeth has heard about it. He has refused Macduff's request for audience and is "preparing for some attempt of war." Lennox sends his prayers along: may a swift blessing come back to "our suffering country, under a hand accursed!" The scene is almost entirely talk, and it does what no battle scene could. It establishes that Macbeth is now the tyrant the audience has suspected; that his courtiers know it; that opposition is forming abroad; that the rest of the play will be the opposition closing in. The whispered sarcasm of two lords in a back room is what political life under Macbeth has become.