MACBETH      Then comes my fit again.

I had else been perfect,

Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,

As broad and general as the casing air;

But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in

To saucy doubts and fears. But Banquo’s safe?

MURDERER    Ay, my good lord; safe in a ditch he bides,

With twenty trenched gashes on his head,

The least a death to nature.

MACBETH      Thanks for that.                     (3.4.19-27)

Then comes my fit again: a shudder? a sense of corporeal disturbance, rupture, vulnerability, premonition fulfilled; that’s how he experiences this news, of Fleance’s escape, in his body, in his over-active mind. He’s not speaking to the Murderer, but to himself. I had else been perfect, he says, if it hadn’t been for this one thing (but it’s never just the one thing, that’s just how we console ourselves, if it weren’t for this, or that), everything would be fine, everything would be finished, over, done. And I would be whole as the marble, founded as the rock, as broad and general as the casing air. Extraordinary language, easily passed over because of what’s about to happen in the scene—but the way in which Macbeth imagines perfection in terms of the coldness, the solidity, the stability of rock. He wants not to be able to feel, not to be able to be moved; conversely, he’d like to be as dispersed, as broad and general, as free, unconstrained as the air which surrounds him. He doesn’t want to have a body, a brain; he wants to be immune to thought and feeling, not to have to make choices or deal with their consequences. He wants to be anywhere else but here, where he is cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears, like a cornered animal or an anxious child, everyone looking at him, feeling out of control. The doubts and fears are saucy because they’re intrusive, insolent, the thoughts he can’t shut up, that he can’t control, those scorpions of his mind. That sense of no way out; this is one of the moments to which the careful setting-up of the castle as a place of many rooms, walls, gates, stairs, chambers has been leading, and also the portrayal of kingship as a heavy robe, a weighty crown, a press of people, constant scrutiny.

Macbeth gets a grip, or at least recovers himself enough to be back in the moment with the Murderer, asking again: but Banquo’s safe? he, at least, is dead, you’ve made sure of that? And the Murderer, with relish, or at least emphasis (because he is now, surely, getting some idea of just how badly they’ve messed it up, from Macbeth’s reaction), oh yes, he’s safe, my good lord. Safely biding in a ditch (so, they’ve dumped the body; it’s awaiting discovery) with twenty trenched gashes on his head, the least a death to nature. The twenty trenched gashes again suggest what Banquo’s going to look like (although the Murderer is probably exaggerating)—but there’s the promise of deep wounds, much blood, of hacking violence, extreme force. Even one of those wounds would have been enough to kill him.

Thanks for that, says Macbeth; it can get a laugh, yes, alright, well done, bit too much information. More than anything, now, he wants the Murderer to go away; he is, after all, in the middle of a dinner party. But things are about to get much, much worse.