She is well aware of what took place since it was her master plan but pretends to be innocent when Duncan's body is found. Lady Macbeth is also shown as a duplicitous character here in this scene. Although the characters onstage are yet to find out that Macbeth is deceitful the audience waits tensely for the moment in which all is revealed. He also killed the two innocent guards who were framed for the murder calling it an act passionate fury. He nevertheless kills the king and feigns disbelief when the body is found. Macbeth wants to be king but he would rather have someone else do the evil deed and take the fall while he becomes king. Shakespeare portrays Macbeth as a person with a conscience but not a moral one. This scene reveals the duplicitous characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. So when they pretend they don’t know what happened it brings out one of the major themes of this play, deception. The audience is well aware that Macbeth was the one that killed the King and that Lady Macbeth helped him to accomplish the mission. As everyone clambers in the tension and disbelief of the other characters start to build up emphasizing the drama of this scene. Speak, speak! ” Lady Macbeth demands to know for what reason Macduff rung the bell awakening everyone that was sleeping. Macduff awoken everyone by yelling and by ringing the bell to which Lady Macbeth responds “What’s the business, /that such a hideous trumpet calls to parley/The sleepers of the house? Shakespeare depicts the shocked tone through Macduff’s words “O horror, horror, horror! ” and through the exclamation marks to represent the tone of surprise in which Macduff spoke. He comes out of the king’s chamber traumatized saying “O horror, horror, horror! /Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee! ” To him this is unbelievable. He had arrived on Duncan's orders to wake him up early only to find the king murdered. He was very much frightened and shocked to find his master dead. Macduff was the one who discovered Duncan's corpse. ” In other words Duncan’s virtuous character was in his blood and now that it has been shed only the shell remained. Macbeth refers to the king’s blood as “the wine of life” and his body as “the dregs that remain. This gives the audience an idea of how kind and just Duncan really was.Įven Macbeth calls the king “graceful and renowned” although the audience is not quite sure whether he meant it or not. For example when Duncan was found murdered Macduff had expressed his disbelief and outrage with the words: “Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope/The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence/The life o' th' building! ” In this quote Shakespeare is comparing Duncan to God’s Temple. However what he did not know was that his death was planned before his arrival.Īlthough we the audience only meet Duncan briefly Shakespeare provides us with an admirable view of Duncan’s character by the way the other characters describe him. He went to Macbeth’s castle to commend Macbeth in his bravery in the war against Scotland. He dramatizes the scene by portraying the discovery of the King’s body, by emphasizing the shock and disbelief of the characters, by the flattering description given of Duncan and by revealing to the audience the deceptive characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. This is the scene in which King Duncan is found murdered causing shock and panic in all the characters on stage. Although in the beginning, Shakespeare foreshadowed the tragedies that were to come nothing could have prepared the audience for what took place in Act 2 scene 3. Title: How does Shakespeare make this scene both a significant and dramatic moment in the play? In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth there are a lot of dramatic, exciting and tragic occurrences in many of the scenes.
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