Hautboys and torches. Enter King, Malcolm, Donalbain, Banquo, Lennox, Macduff, Ross, Angus, and attendants
KING This castle hath a pleasant seat. The air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
BANQUO This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
By his loved mansionry that the heavens’ breath
Smells wooingly here. No jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage but this bird
Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle.
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate. (1.6.1-10)
A big ensemble scene, with as many attendants as can be mustered: the King has come to Macbeth’s castle, and it’s a big deal. There are hautboys, rather than trumpets; they’re still loud (they’re a double reed instrument, more strident than an oboe) and on stage sometimes have sinister associations, including with the supernatural, but here they’re probably just announcing royalty, and underscoring that this is no longer a battlefield. The torches—unlikely to be there in a modern production—announce that it’s already night, or at least dusk. And Duncan isn’t commenting on the view, primarily, in his, gosh, isn’t it lovely up here? opening gambit. What a charming setting, a pleasant seat; it smells nice, feels nice. The air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses.(Duncan has, of course, observed in the previous scene that he’s a very bad judge of appearances, apt to be deceived by things that look good on the outside, like treacherous thanes.)
But Banquo is at pains to concur, with an ornithological and sentimental, not to say sensual flight of fancy that seems unexpected from Macbeth’s brother in bloody arms. Yes, there’s obviously clear air and gentle breezes here, because, look, the martlets (swifts or house-martins) are building nests on the castle. And they’re picky about their nesting sites: they like temples, churches, sacred buildings (so sanctifying the castle by association), and here they’ve nested all over, painstakingly building their nests, their loved mansionry, on every suitable bit of masonry, whether that be jutty, frieze, butty or coign. All the bits that stick out, basically: Banquo surfaces the castle with craggy stone, makes it a formidable monument, but as hospitable (as they imagine it) to kings as to birds. The invocation of the temples and the mansionry perhaps makes the castle a divine place as well as a pleasant, blessed one: ‘how amiable are thy dwellings: thou Lord of hosts’, begins Psalm 84, where ‘the sparrow hath found her an house, and the swallow a nest, where she may lay her young’; ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions’, Christ promises his disciples in John 14.2’. It’s a place, ironically, of fertility, at least for birds, with those pendant beds and procreant cradles.
And the croaking ravens, in deep, dark cover as those pious, house-proud martlets, smirk and preen. Phase one of the still-unspoken plan is underway.
(Yes I know that a raven is orders of magnitude larger than a house martin. I just like the idea of ravens in disguise.)
