MACDUFF O gentle lady,
’Tis not for you to hear what I can speak.
The repetition in a woman’s ear
Would murder as it fell.
Enter Banquo
O Banquo, Banquo,
Our royal master’s murdered.
LADY Woe, alas!
What, in our house?
BANQUO Too cruel anywhere.
Dear Duff, I prithee contradict thyself
And say it is not so. (2.3.76-83)
Macduff’s response to Lady Macbeth—not quite, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, leave it to the menfolk, but tending that way—is not just about soliciting an ironic snort from the audience, but about Macduff as a character: he’s sensitive, and if this were his wife, he’d want to protect her, to shield her from this appalling sight and whatever else might be about to unfold; it’s an important character note for him later on in the play. And never mind seeing it (he’s certainly not going to suggest that she go and see for herself, as he did to Lennox and Macbeth)—he doesn’t even want to tell her about it; the repetition in a woman’s ear would murder as it fell. Merely hearing of such horrors would do violence to her, the words falling on her like blows. Murder. Macduff thinks he’s speaking metaphorically… He pivots, though, not waiting to hear a response from Lady Macbeth, or to tell her what’s happened, because here’s Banquo, and that’s more urgent; he has to give him the terrible news. O Banquo, Banquo, our royal master’s murdered. So Lady Macbeth hears anyway, and her reaction seems magnificently incongruous: Woe, alas! What, in our house? As Banquo’s puzzled? reproving? response suggests, too cruel anywhere. But actually Lady Macbeth’s reaction is a good simulacrum of shock, the seizing on a detail rather than the whole picture; there’s a direct parallel in Hamlet, when Gertrude tells Laertes ‘Your sister’s drowned, Laertes’ and he replies ‘Drowned! O, where?’ An early modern audience might recognise that both Laertes and Lady Macbeth are asking about circumstance (where, when, how) as a form of proof, they’re being forensic, not incongruous (although that’s the effect to a modern ear). And the actor playing Lady Macbeth has a lot of latitude in her physical reactions: does she maintain her performance of disbelief and shock throughout, are there visible flickers of calculation? She has almost no lines to work with, and yet her isolation on stage and the extreme tension of the moment meant that eyes are necessarily drawn to her, from both offstage and on. Banquo models another response: where Macduff is shocked, traumatised, immediately aware of the magnitude of what’s happened, Banquo is disbelieving, uncomprehending in his shock: dear Duff (and that’s probably abbreviated for metrical reasons, rather than suggesting that all the thanes habitually abbreviate their names when conversing among themselves—but it does create intimacy, a comradely pleading)—I prithee contradict thyself and say it is not so. Does Banquo even now begin to worry that Macbeth has been involved? It’s a possibility.
