Knock [within]
PORTER Knock, knock. Never at quiet. What are you? But this place is too cold for hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further. I had thought to have let in some of all professions that go the primrose way to th’everlasting bonfire.
Knock [within]
Anon, anon! I pray you remember the porter.
Enter Macduff and Lennox
MACDUFF Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed
That you do lie so late?
PORTER Faith, sir, we were carousing till the second cock. And drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.(2.3.13-20)
Whoever’s knocking at the gate isn’t giving up, and the Porter’s getting annoyed: never a moment’s peace. Who can it be? He gives up and abandons his conceit: this place is too cold for hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further, dropping the amusing, revealing identification of the castle with hell, and himself as the keeper of its gate. I could have kept it up, mind, listing some of all professions, all those occupations that are destined for hell, the everlasting bonfire (bonfires were often lit as part of popular celebrations, especially in London, but here it’s ironic, not a fun bonfire at all) the way to which is smooth and easy, pleasant with primroses. (In Hamlet, the ‘primrose path’ is explicitly associated with ‘dalliance’, flirtation and licentiousness, when Ophelia tells her brother not to be a hypocrite in his sententious moralising about her behaviour with Hamlet; perhaps the Porter is signalling that if he were to continue his caricatures of contemporary sinners that their sins would be sexual in nature.) And a final knock as he capitulates: anon, anon, I’m on my way, just a minute! I pray you remember the porter. He’s asking whoever’s at the gate for a tip, payment for his trouble, but he’s also winking at the audience as he retreats more definitely into the world of the play, asking for their favour but also, perhaps, that they continue to remember his sinister, cynical, infernal chat, as the porter of hell-gate.
Macduff and Lennox: ah yes, them. Macduff hasn’t been especially prominent thus far in the play; he might have been silently present in some of the earlier scenes with the thanes, but this is in fact his first line in the play, exasperation (which might be quite friendly) at a functionary who’s being unaccountably slow to do his job. Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed that you do lie so late?What’s kept you? Were you still fast asleep after a late night? So, time has passed; it’s now early morning, around dawn, it having been well after midnight when Macbeth had his conversation with Banquo. And the Porter explains: well, yes, we were drinking, carousing till the second cock, until nearly dawn. And drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things. The Porter’s recovered a bit, about to slip into another routine, more cheeky servant, less savage satanic satirist.
