Enter Lennox and another Lord
LENNOX My former speeches have but hit your thoughts,
Which can interpret farther. Only I say
Things have been strangely borne. The gracious Duncan
Was pitied of Macbeth; marry, he was dead.
And the right valiant Banquo walked too late,
Whom you may say, if’t please you, Fleance killed;
For Fleance fled. Men must not walk too late. (3.6.1-7)
What I’ve said already, says Lennox, has obviously coincided with what you’re thinking already, given you a bit of a prod, hit your thoughts, and you can draw your own conclusions. Only I say things have been strangely borne: there’s been a lot of funny stuff going on, and the way it’s been managed has been—odd. That’s as much as I’m prepared to say. And then he goes on to catalogue it, carefully, emphatically, being as explicit as he can but going only so far. The gracious Duncan was pitied of Macbeth: he grieved for him when he was dead, as he honoured him, welcomed him, cared for him when he was alive. (It’s more opaque than it first appears: is this about Macbeth’s reaction to Duncan’s death, or his behaviour towards him before his death? The latter is what’s suggested by the syntax, the former makes more sense. Perhaps what matters here is both the opacity and the now-incongruous association of Macbeth with pity.) And another thing: the right valiant Banquo, that courageous man, he simply walked too late, it seems, and so was murdered; things like that happen if you’re out after dark, apparently. But—and this is genius—the rumour is, it seems, that Fleance killed his father Banquo, for Fleance fled. (An argument for making Fleance a teenager, rather than a child?) So, is that the rumour that Macbeth’s spreading, that it was Fleance? Is he hoping, perhaps, that Fleance might be captured, framed for his father’s murder, and put to death too? Fleance fleeing, and therefore being deemed guilty, is a rerun of the framing of Malcolm and Donalbain, and the servants, to whom Lennox will come next. Men must not walk too late: that’s clearly the conclusion to be drawn from this, oh yes.
What matters here most is the shift in tone (and this seems to be the morning after the banquet): Lennox is properly scared, people are uneasy, starting to talk—but it’s dangerous to speak too openly or say too much. Best to be oblique, opaque, not incriminate yourself. (A civil servant’s voice; this is also in some ways a rerun of the scene the morning after Duncan’s murder, with the Old Man.) This attests to Macbeth’s revelation, at the end of the banquet scene, that he has spies in the households of all his thanes, that he trusts no one, not even his inner circle. Lennox is starting to build up a picture of Macbeth as tyrant; he’s testing the waters (something that will happen increasingly from now on, among different groups of characters) to see if there might be resistance to Macbeth, if not immediately, then eventually. The other Lord to whom he talks could be Ross, and often is in performance, but if he’s anonymous, just another of the thanes, then that reinforces the jumpiness, the anxiety, and also the sense that rumours are spreading, no one’s quite sure of where loyalties lie. But Lennox has broken cover and, ever so carefully, obliquely, with almost total deniability (at least at first) he’s sounding out this anonymous Lord, to see whose side he might, eventually, be on.
