BANQUO        [to Ross and Angus] Look how our partner’s rapt.

MACBETH      [aside] If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me

Without my stir.

BANQUO        [to Ross and Angus] New honours come upon him

Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould

But with the aid of use.

MACBETH     [aside] Come what come may,

Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.           (1.3.138-143)

Tone—of course—is important here. Is Banquo puzzled, dismayed, amused as he comments, of Macbeth, Look how our partner’s rapt?Preoccupied and distracted don’t begin to describe the degree to which Macbeth’s beside himself, taken out of himself. He’s captivated, and taken captive, by something that the others cannot see (although Banquo has a fair idea what’s going on, of course). But Macbeth seems to step back from the brink, just: if chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me without my stir. If it’s all a matter of chance, of fate then, just as was (perhaps) the case with being named Thane of Cawdor, I don’t need to do anything, because if it’s fated, it’ll happen anyway. I don’t need to make a choice, engage my will, declare an intention; whatever happens, in a sense I won’t even be responsible, or culpable. I just have to wait. (Compare the busy-ness of Iago, or the way in which Richard III describes himself as bustling. Macbeth is not a Machiavel.) Banquo has to offer some kind of explanation to Ross and Angus, who might, by this point, be not just puzzled or amused, but worried about Macbeth’s state of mind. He’s overcome at the honour that’s been done to him, can’t quite take it in! It’ll take him a while to get used to it, like a strange garment, new and unfamiliar clothes, that take a while to become accustomed to, feel comfortable. (There could be a very long digression here about early modern clothes, and the way in which they often had to be tied and pinned to fit. I also wonder, just, if there might be an allusion to the Scottish plaid, referring not to the fabric but to a garment, a blanket-like length of cloth worn as a cloak or mantle which, like a toga, would need practice and management to wear, and which would appear a strange garment to a London audience, like the Irish mantle with which it was often identified.) What matters more, though, is that at this point Macbeth has indeed decided to do nothing. He’s going to leave it to chance: come what come may. Time and the hour runs through the roughest day: what will be will be; even the roughest day comes to an end, as inevitably and inexorably as the sand runs through a glass…