Flourish. Enter King, Lennox, Malcolm, Donalbain, and attendants

KING   Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not

Those in commission yet returned?

MALCOLM                              My liege,

They are not yet come back. But I have spoke

With one that saw him die, who did report

That very frankly he confessed his treasons,

Implored your highness’ pardon, and set forth

A deep repentance. Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it. He died

As one that had been studied in his death

To throw away the dearest thing he owned,

As ’twere a careless trifle.                (1.4.1-11)

At least in the Folio, every scene so far has begun with a carefully differentiated sound or music cue. Thunder and lightning for the witches, alarum for the battle field, thunder again (followed by a drum for Macbeth’s approach) and now a flourish: this, the second scene with the King and his attendants, is far more settled; it’s in effect a court scene, rather than one taking place in uncertainty and danger on the edge of a battle. Hence a fanfare, in effect, and perhaps even a more formal entrance for the King, something more akin to a procession. A reminder immediately, however, of the circumstances: a rebellion has only just been put down and one of its leaders, the erstwhile Thane of Cawdor, has been sentenced to death. So there’s also a very particular temporality being shaped here, which might retroactively inform the previous scene: has that man whom I recently sentenced to death now been executed? I sent the order; have the messengers that took it, those in commission not yet returned? The previous scene, therefore, has in a sense taken place in a kind of limbo, a moment of suspension when a man (whom we never see) is a dead man walking, but still alive. Macbeth, now, is the Thane of Cawdor, a curious double to his living-dead predecessor, and caught in a similar kind of limbo. That the official news of the execution hasn’t yet arrived, but Malcolm can confirm it via hearsay—I have spoke with one that saw him die—increases that sense of suspension. Cawdor is dead, only not yet officially dead. What matters here, though, is that he made a good death, confessing his treasons frankly, imploring pardon, and setting forth a deep repentance. Such a good death, with dignity, Christian fortitude, and expressions of loyalty to the sovereign on the scaffold, was much idealised and promulgated in the period. (Gunpowder Plot: catastrophically horrible, macabre deaths by torture, in effect, as were all such deaths for treason. Some, at least, of the executed men died with notable gallantry and humility: at the end of his trial, sentenced to death, Sir Everard Digby bowed low to the commissioners and asked their forgiveness. ‘God forgive you, and we do’, they replied.) This unseen traitor Cawdor sets a standard for the play. Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it; his life had been wretched, corrupt, or simply ordinary, but he at least partially redeemed himself in death. He died as one that had been studied in his death to throw away the dearest thing he owned, as ’twere a careless trifle. He was well prepared, and acted his part well (actors studied their parts); he gave up his life, the dearest thing he owned, as if it were something trivial, for which he had no care, a careless trifle. (Again, an echo of Othello, both the handkerchief as trifle, and Othello’s final speech, in which he compares himself to the base Indian (or Judean) who threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe.)

Macbeth is interested in how people die, and in how those deaths can be talked about and imagined on stage.