Enter Macbeth’s Lady and a Servant

LADY              Is Banquo gone from court?

SERVANT       Ay, madam, but returns again tonight.

LADY              Say to the King I would attend his leisure

For a few words.

SERVANT       Madam, I will.

Exit

LADY              Naught’s had, all’s spent,

Where our desire is got without content.

’Tis safer to be that which we destroy

Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.            (3.2.1-9)

So it’s confirmed that Banquo has indeed left the court, and gone out on his ride; he returns again tonight. More important here, though, is the fact that Lady Macbeth now has to send a servant to ask her husband to come and see her, whenever it suits him, when he’s got a moment; she would attend his leisure for a few words. He is the King, no longer simply ‘my lord’, and he is not by her side at every possible moment; she cannot guarantee that he will be with her unasked, or soon, she has to say that it’s just for a few words, no great claim on his time. Something’s wrong. (Many things are wrong.) And once the servant’s gone—madam, I will—it starts to come out, in a pair of tight, tense, overwrought couplets. Naught’s had, all’s spent: nothing is possessed enduringly, even though everything’s been expended, or squandered; nothing’s worth it, if we get what we (think we) desire but it doesn’t make us happy. The contrary, rather. It’s safer, more secure, simply better to be the thing that we destroy, that we thought we hated, that we thought was the source of our discontent, than by destruction to dwell in doubtful joy, in a longed-for fulfilment, happiness that is full of doubts, worries, fears—and therefore is no happiness at all. Nothing is certain, nothing is safe—and the rhyme words do the work, content/spent, destroy/joy. No rest, no security, no ease, no peace.