Macbett—Duncan

The relationship between Macbett and Duncan is the play’s passage from feudal obedience to usurpation: Macbett begins as a rewarded servant who invokes his duty to his sovereign, but ends by taking Duncan’s throne and declaring that the living must acknowledge him instead. The change is not simply a break between two rulers. Duncan’s authority first directs Macbett’s military conduct, then becomes the obstacle Macbett means to remove; after Duncan’s fall, his appearance on the throne makes the old sovereign a continuing challenge to the new one.

Feudal Service and Unequal Reward

Macbett describes Duncan as his feudal overlord and explains that he performed the services required of him. When Banco points out that Duncan took Glamiss’s lands for himself while giving Macbett the title, Macbett denies having intrigued for the favor and minimizes Duncan’s lapses. His defensive answer registers the tension inside their bond: Duncan has benefited him, but the distribution of rewards has also left Banco conspicuously unrewarded. Macbett’s insistence that he did not ask for his own advancement does not undo the disparity; it presents his place at court as something awarded by Duncan rather than won through a plot.

Banco’s complaint makes that unequal relationship concrete. Macbett and Lady Duncan have tried to secure a position for Banco, and Macbett says they have both intervened with the Archduke on his behalf. When those efforts fail, Macbett proposes using more forceful arguments, then stronger ones still. His language turns a request for recognition into a threat of escalation. The exchange does not yet announce an assault on Duncan, but it shows how the king’s refusal to grant Banco’s promised reward can make ordinary petition seem exhausted and coercion increasingly thinkable.

Command and Obedience

The military relationship between the two men is expressed in an exchange over a captured opponent. Duncan asks why Macbett has not killed the prisoner; Macbett answers that he is waiting for Duncan’s orders. Duncan then commands him to execute the prisoner and presses for news of Glamiss, demanding to know whether he has been torn apart. Macbett replies that Glamiss is surrounded and is expected to be captured. The scene establishes a hierarchy in which Duncan issues the decisive commands and Macbett reports the progress of the campaign, even when the king’s impatience makes capture seem insufficient.

Macbett’s deference is therefore not merely ceremonial. He presents obedience as the reason he has not acted, while Duncan treats the power to order death as his own. That pattern sharpens the irony of the later revolt: the servant who once waits for authorization will eventually decide that Duncan himself must be removed. The bond contains both the language of duty and the means of force, so its reversal will alter not only their personal allegiance but also who gets to give orders.

From Petition to Rebellion

The break becomes explicit when Macbett and Banco turn from seeking redress to demanding self-rule. Banco defines their aim as running their own affairs; Macbett answers that Duncan must be driven out, and Banco calls for Duncan’s removal. Their shared language marks a decisive change in Macbett’s relation to the sovereign. Duncan is no longer a ruler whose favor can be sought through counsel or whose commands must be obeyed. He has become the person standing in the way of the independence they claim.

That change follows the earlier failure to obtain Banco’s promised reward, but the available exchanges preserve an important distinction: Macbett has professed that Duncan’s favors came without his intrigue, and the two men first discuss advocating for Banco. The later call to drive Duncan out is a more radical answer than continued petition. Their movement from attempted influence to rebellion makes Macbett’s service unstable in retrospect: the same courtly access that had enabled him to ask Duncan for a place for Banco gives way to a plan to end Duncan’s rule.

The Attack on Duncan

During the attack, Banco is revealed beneath the Monk’s disguise, while Lady Duncan also throws off her disguise and stabs the Officer. Duncan recognizes both conspirators. As he retreats toward the throne, Lady Duncan snatches away his cloak; he backs up the steps trying to cover himself, exposed without the garment. His scepter falls one way and his crown another as Macbett pulls him down, and Banco strikes the first blow. The scene turns the symbols and gestures of sovereign protection into signs of dispossession: Duncan is driven from the throne while the objects of office scatter away from him.

Macbett’s part in this assault is specific but shared. He pulls Duncan down; Banco strikes first, and Lady Duncan has already attacked the Officer. The staging thus shows the former servant physically participating in the overthrow without reducing the conspiracy to a one-man act. Duncan’s cry of accusation identifies the violence as betrayal, while the fallen crown and scepter give visible form to the collapse of the authority Macbett had once obeyed.

The Returning Sovereign and the New Claim

Duncan’s defeat does not end his presence in Macbett’s story. At a later gathering, after Banco disappears, Duncan appears mounting the throne. Macbett challenges the guests for accepting Duncan’s presence and asks whether their former submission has made them accustomed to honoring him. He then contrasts that recognition with his own claim: he has taken Duncan’s throne and wife, insists that he served Duncan well despite being distrusted, and orders the guests to return to their places and pay homage to him. The encounter makes the new ruler’s authority depend on the same public gestures of recognition that once sustained Duncan’s.

The episode also exposes the incompleteness of Macbett’s victory. He dismisses Duncan as a ghost, yet Duncan occupies the throne before the guests, and Macbett feels compelled to explain why they must not honor him. Having seized the sovereign’s position, Macbett cannot prevent the former sovereign from reappearing as an image against which his own rule must be asserted. Their relationship thus ends not in reconciliation but in a contest over allegiance: Duncan remains the figure to whom the guests instinctively turn, while Macbett demands that they transfer their homage to him.