Critically analyse the Banquet
Scene in Macbeth
In order to satisfy the popular
taste of the contemporary audience for melodramatic presentation of materials
on the stage, Shakespeare presents a popular spectacle on the stage in the form
of Banquo’s ghost in Macbeth, which subsequently has come to generate numerous
debates, readings and, of course, presentation on both the stage and the
celluloid. Whether the ghost of Banquo is subjective or objective is variously
debated, and the best way to judging this is to appreciate the scene from the
chair of an audience at the theatre, not from the easy chair of a reader at
home. On the stage the ghost is visible only to Macbeth and the audience, both
of whom understand the cruelty involved in the act of murder, while the other
characters are supposed to be unaware of its presence. In this perhaps it
becomes possible to understand that Banquo’s ghost plays an important and
integral role in the development of the tragic action of the play and in
bringing about the nemesis of Macbeth.
The Banquet Scene (scene iv, Act III) opens at the royal hall of Scotland with the banquet ready celebrating Macbeth’s coronation. The audience find the couple now at the height of double-dealing, and detect in the opening words of the new king tinge of irony: “You know your own degrees…” The fact is that it is Macbeth who has forgotten his degree, his limitation as a human being. Therefore, the arrival of Banquo as a ghost is necessary to expose this treacherous person. But before that, treachery has been highlighted in the act of offering the banquet. One may detect here an ironic reversal of the Last Supper offered by Christ, the Saviour. In fact, Macbeth’s act of murdering the king and thus violating the moral order is re-enacted in his consecration of such a sacred tritual as offering a communal feast, a ritual which has been looked upon as a gesture of faith and fraternal bond existing in the community everywhere and always in the human culture.
