As the banquet begins, the ghost of Banquo sits in Macbeth’s place at the table. He is disappointed that the ‘worm’ Fleance escaped but he reassures himself that there is no immediate threat because Fleance is so young. Macbeth sees one of the murderers arrive with blood on his face and is pleased to hear that Banquo is dead in a ditch ‘with twenty trenched gashes on his head’. The final step of the plan is for Lady Macbeth and Macbeth to act horrified on the discovery of the murder and ‘clamour roar / Upon his death’. They will frame the guards for Duncan’s murder by covering their daggers in Duncan’s blood.
She will give Duncan’s two guards so much wine that they ‘lie as in death’, allowing Duncan to be an unguarded target for Macbeth to attack in the night. Macbeth is further persuaded by the strength of their plan. She goads him by saying that she would have ‘dash’d the brains out’ of her own baby if she had promised it to him. When Macbeth tells her that he has decided against killing Duncan, she is furious, calling him a coward and a ‘beast’. Lady Macbeth tells him off for leaving the hall. He struggles with his conscience and decides not to go through with it because it is only his ‘vaulting ambition’ that is pushing him onwards. Outside the banqueting hall, Macbeth considers his complex thoughts about killing Duncan. Banquo and Macbeth decide to discuss the witches’ prophecies at a later time. Then he adds in an aside that ‘chance may crown me, without my stir’. He realises that to become king, Duncan would have to die but he thinks this is a ‘horrid image’. Macbeth considers ‘this supernatural soliciting’. Ross and Angus arrive to tell Macbeth that he has been given the title Thane of Cawdor by Duncan to thank him for his valiant efforts in the battle. Macbeth demands to know how their prediction about him can be true when the Thane of Cawdor is still alive but the witches vanish. They predict that his children will be 'kings, though thou be none’.
The witches hail Macbeth firstly by his title Thane of Glamis, then as Thane of Cawdor and finally as ‘king hereafter!’ Banquo says there is no need to ‘fear things that sound so fair’, and asks the witches for his future. The men encounter the witches ‘that look not like th’inhabitants o’th’earth’. They hear Macbeth and Banquo approaching and cast a spell. Another has been insulted by a sailor’s wife so they plot to cast a spell which will disrupt the sailor’s next sea journey to Aleppo.
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