MACBETH [To the Ghost] How say you? —
Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.
If charnel houses and our graves must send
Those that we bury back, our monuments
Shall be the maws of kites.
[Exit Ghost]
LADY What, quite unmanned in folly?
MACBETH If I stand here, I saw him.
LADY Fie for shame! (3.4.67-72)
The silence of Banquo’s Ghost makes him much more uncanny than Hamlet’s father’s ghost, or others of Shakespeare’s ghosts (in Richard III, for instance). It makes the Ghost less defined, eerier; if he spoke, there would be the additional question of why no one else can hear him either. There might be a gesture of refusal at Macbeth’s How say you? what have you got to say for yourself? the Ghost perhaps continues to shake his head, or nod (menacingly!) so that Macbeth briefly becomes defiant: Why, what care I? The defiance doesn’t last; he really wants the Ghost to speak: if thou canst nod, speak too. Say something! Anything! And a grisly detail, strongly recalling Hamlet once again: if charnel houses and graves can no longer contain the dead, if the dead won’t stay dead, if they come back to haunt us, then we’ll have to leave their bodies not in tombs but to carrion birds, to be utterly consumed in the maws of kites. (It’s been a while since carrion birds have been directly invoked by Macbeth, but they’ve clearly been lurking in his mind, croaking with greed and malice.) And so the Ghost pops off, apparently, although the stage direction is editorial (well, second folio onwards) and Macbeth is—shaking? gibbering? sweating? pointing with a wavering arm, or shaking a fist in defiance? Lady Macbeth resumes her old tune: what, quite unmanned in folly? you pathetic fool, you impotent, limp coward (and there’s certainly a disgusted phallic undertone here); are you a man? you’re acting like a child, not just a child, a girl! If I stand here, I saw him! The child, desperate to be believed, I did, I did, as surely as I’m standing here, sticking to his story. Fie for shame! you pathetic little boy, and now you’re telling lies, making it all up. Oh heck, the weird, twisty, sad gender and family dynamics that are echoing through these exchanges. Never mind the bloody Ghost…
