Banquo

At a glance

Banquo is Macbeth's fellow general and friend, and Shakespeare uses him as a foil (a character who shows up another by contrast): he hears a prophecy too, and does not kill for it.

• Role in the plot: told he will father kings, he warns Macbeth, later suspects him, and is murdered; he returns as a ghost at the banquet and following a line of kings who descend from him (Act 4, Scene 1).
• Defining traits:
  • Brave: as untroubled by the enemy as "eagles" by "sparrows" (Act 1, Scene 2).
  • Sceptical: "What, can the devil speak true?" (Act 1, Scene 3).
  • Tempted, but prays against it: "Restrain in me the cursed thoughts" (Act 2, Scene 1).
  • Compromised by silence: "But hush; no more." (Act 3, Scene 1).
• Themes he carries: fate and free will, ambition, loyalty, the supernatural, kingship and legitimacy, guilt.
• Relationships and foils: Macbeth (friend, then murderer); Fleance (the son who carries the prophecy); Duncan (his king).

Their journey

1. Hero (Act 1, Scenes 2 and 3). He challenges the Witches boldly: "Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear / Your favours nor your hate". His prophecy is a paradox, "Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none": his reward lies in the future, which is why Macbeth later feels his own crown is "fruitless" (Act 3, Scene 1).
2. Guest (Act 1, Scenes 4 and 6). He answers Duncan's image of planting with "There if I grow, / The harvest is your own", and praises the "temple-haunting martlet" nesting at Macbeth's castle: dramatic irony.
3. Tempted (Act 2, Scene 1). He cannot sleep, prays against his dreams, and admits "I dreamt last night of the three Weird Sisters". He will follow Macbeth only if he keeps "My bosom franchis'd, and allegiance clear".
4. Silent suspicion (Act 2, Scene 3 to Act 3, Scene 1). In public he says "In the great hand of God I stand" and vows to fight treason. In his soliloquy he suspects Macbeth "play'dst most foully" for the crown, yet says nothing and hopes the prophecy will come true for his sons. This is the turning point.
5. Murder and return (Act 3, Scenes 3 and 4; Act 4, Scene 1). His last words save his son. His ghost takes Macbeth's seat at the banquet, and in Act 4, Scene 1 "the blood-bolter'd Banquo smiles" at the line of kings descended from him.

Banquo proves the same prophecy can meet a different response, yet his silence shows how tyranny grows when good men keep quiet.

Key quotations

• "Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear / Things that do sound so fair?" (Act 1, Scene 3). Fear at good news means Macbeth has already thought of something bad, and Banquo notices. "Fair" echoes the Witches; Banquo is the first to read Macbeth's face.
• "The instruments of darkness tell us truths; / Win us with honest trifles, to betray's / In deepest consequence." (Act 1, Scene 3). "Instruments" makes the Witches tools of a darker power. "Honest trifles" are small truths that earn trust for a fatal lie. It is the clearest warning in the play, and Macbeth ignores it: this is precisely how the Cawdor title works on him.
• "Merciful powers, / Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature / Gives way to in repose!" (Act 2, Scene 1). He has the same dark dreams as Macbeth; the difference is prayer. One reading: goodness is not the absence of temptation but resistance to it. Another: even the good man is not pure, which makes the play's moral world more troubling.
• "Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glamis, all, / As the Weird Women promis'd; and, I fear, / Thou play'dst most foully for't" (Act 3, Scene 1). The list runs the prophecies backwards, as if tracing the crime to its root. "I fear" softens the accusation into a private worry, and he tells no one.
• "May they not be my oracles as well, / And set me up in hope? But hush; no more." (Act 3, Scene 1). The rhetorical question shows ambition stirring. "Hush" is him silencing himself, as he silences his suspicion. "Oracles" gives the Witches a status he refused them in Act 1.
• "Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly! / Thou mayst revenge." (Act 3, Scene 3). The repetition is urgent and physical. His last thoughts are of his son and of justice, the opposite of Macbeth, whose last thoughts are of himself.

How Shakespeare builds them

• A soliloquy. His ten-line speech in Act 3, Scene 1 reveals the suspicion and hope he hides in public.
• Silence. After "Too cruel anywhere" (Act 2, Scene 3), Bradley notes that he "remains absolutely silent" for nearly forty lines.
• Seen through Macbeth's fear. "Our fears in Banquo / Stick deep, and in his royalty of nature / Reigns that which would be fear'd" (Act 3, Scene 1). His enemy grants him a kingliness Macbeth lacks, so the murder is envy as well as policy.
• The ghost. A silent presence only Macbeth can see, which sits in Macbeth's own place at the table (Act 3, Scene 4). Without a word, it stages the rightful line displacing the usurper, and Macbeth's guilt made visible.
• Imagery of growth and light. Seeds and harvest (Act 1, Scenes 3 and 4) make him a father of the future. Darkness gathers round him: "There's husbandry in heaven; / Their candles are all out" (Act 2, Scene 1), and his murderers kill the light as they kill him (Act 3, Scene 3).

Context

• Holinshed made him an accomplice. In Shakespeare's source, Macbeth shared his plan with trusted friends, "amongst whome Banquho was the chiefest". Shakespeare makes him innocent, most likely because James I traced his family line back to Banquo.
• The Stuart line on stage. The show of eight kings in Act 4, Scene 1 ends with a king holding a mirror, and Macbeth sees kings carrying "twofold balls and treble sceptres", pointing to James, king of more than one realm. Banquo's smile is a compliment to the King.
• The Devil's half-truths. King James's Daemonologie (1597) says the Devil wins trust by foretelling "manie greate thinges; parte true, parte false". This is exactly Banquo's warning about "honest trifles" (Act 1, Scene 3), and his own word "oracles" (Act 3, Scene 1) shows him falling for it.

Interpretations

• The good man and true foil. He resists temptation through prayer (Act 2, Scene 1), refuses to trade his "allegiance", and dies protecting his son. Read this way, he proves the prophecy does not force anyone's hand.
• Compromised by silence and ambition. Bradley argues Banquo "may be described much more truly than Macbeth as the victim of the Witches", and that by Act 3 "he has yielded to evil". Evidence: he tells no one what he suspects, and binds himself to the new king "with a most indissoluble tie" (Act 3, Scene 1).
• A political portrait. Because James claimed descent from him, Banquo's innocence is a gift to the King as much as a moral argument.

How to write about them

Three arguments a grade 9 answer could build:

1. Banquo proves Macbeth chose. Same Witches, same kind of prophecy, same dark dreams: one man prays, the other kills.
2. Goodness is fragile under tyranny. Banquo resists temptation in private but falls silent in public, and his silence helps Macbeth's reign take root.
3. He wins through fatherhood, not the sword. Macbeth holds a "fruitless crown" while "the seed of Banquo" become kings (Act 3, Scene 1): the future belongs to the man who did not grab it.

Moments to reach for:

• Fate and free will: "instruments of darkness" (Act 1, Scene 3), "cursed thoughts" (Act 2, Scene 1).
• Ambition and loyalty: "My bosom franchis'd, and allegiance clear" (Act 2, Scene 1), "May they not be my oracles as well" (Act 3, Scene 1).
• Guilt and the supernatural: the ghost (Act 3, Scene 4), "blood-bolter'd Banquo" (Act 4, Scene 1).