The ghosts at Macbett’s feast and Lady Duncan’s return

The ghosts at Macbett’s feast and Lady Duncan’s return bring the ruler’s buried crimes into the ceremony he has designed to enforce his authority. Banco appears to accuse Macbett of treachery, fraud, and murder; Duncan then occupies the throne Macbett has seized; and Lady Duncan arrives from the palace dungeon to reveal that Macbett’s supposed marriage was to a sorceress wearing her identity. Her return changes the scene from a confrontation with the dead into a political reckoning: she is alive, knows what has happened, and announces that Macol is approaching with an army while the country turns against Macbett.

A Feast Interrupted by the Dead

The sequence begins with Macbett demanding that the guests declare whether anyone considers him a bad ruler. They remain silent, and he presses the performance further, calling himself the best and greatest ruler and ordering the guests to get drunk. The ceremony of approval rests on their submission: they are present, but do not speak against him. When Banco suddenly appears framed in the doorway at stage right, the silence acquires an adversary. Banco advances and answers Macbett’s challenge directly: “I dare, Macbett.” He then calls him “a traitor, a swindler, and a murderer.”

Macbett gives ground. His first response acknowledges that Banco should be dead, but he tries to diminish the apparition as no more than “a few odds and ends, the remains of his old personality—leftovers, a robot.” The denial cannot hold the stage. Banco disappears, and almost at the same moment Duncan appears, mounting the throne. The sequence makes the two apparitions distinct in their theatrical force: Banco advances to speak against Macbett, while Duncan’s silent presence on the throne places the dispossessed sovereign back in the seat from which Macbett has usurped him.

The Usurper Tries to Reassert Authority

Macbett challenges the guests for treating Duncan’s appearance as real while dismissing Banco as a ghost. He asks whether their awe comes from having grown accustomed to paying homage to Duncan as their sovereign, then insists that Duncan, too, is “only a ghost.” In the same speech, Macbett boasts that he has taken Duncan’s throne and wife, claims that he served Duncan well despite being distrusted, and orders the guests to acknowledge him as their only king. He draws his dagger as he commands them to return to their places and pay him homage. The guests retreat, terrified.

The stage picture exposes the weakness in Macbett’s claim. His orders can make the guests withdraw, but they cannot make Duncan’s presence disappear from their sight. Macbett treats the dead king as a rival whose authority can be dismissed by naming him a ghost, even as he demands the same reverence the guests once gave Duncan. His performance of sovereignty thus repeats the gestures of the rule he replaced, while the apparition makes the displaced predecessor present again. The guests’ fear registers the force of Macbett’s weapon and command, not a settled belief that his authority is secure.

Lady Duncan Reveals the Impersonation

After Duncan disappears behind the throne, a maid announces that Macbett’s wife has disappeared. When Lady Duncan enters, she is coming up from the cellar; she no longer wears her crown, and her dress is rumpled. Macbett invites her to take the place of honor, and a guest calls her their beloved sovereign. She answers that she is their sovereign, but rejects the name Lady Macbett: she identifies herself as Lady Duncan, the widow of their rightful king.

Her account overturns the wedding’s apparent meaning. What the guests witnessed, she says, was not her marriage to Macbett, but Macbett’s marriage to a sorceress who had taken her face, voice, and body. That sorceress had thrown her into the palace dungeons and chained her there. Lady Duncan says her chains fell and the bolts drew back as if by magic. She refuses any role as Macbett’s accomplice and names him the murderer of his master and friend, an usurper and an impostor. The return therefore corrects more than her presumed absence: it exposes the false identity on which Macbett’s marriage and public presentation of his queen depended.

Lady Duncan also explains how she learned what had happened beyond her confinement. Her prison neighbors tapped messages in code on the wall, a “prison telegraph” through which she heard the news. The guests question how she could know, but her answer connects the palace’s locked space to the events outside it: isolation has not kept the account of Macbett’s rule from reaching her. She even directs him to look for the sorceress, whom she calls his beautiful wife and an old hag. Macbett’s sung lament marks his recognition that this accuser is not another ghost: “This time it’s not a ghost, it’s not a ghost this time.”

Exposure Becomes a Political Threat

Macbett dismisses the danger and orders the guests out as slaves, but Lady Duncan answers with a warning about the limits of his reign. Macol, Duncan’s son, has returned from Carthage, she says, and gathered a large, powerful army. The whole country is against Macbett; he has run out of friends. The warning is followed by shouts demanding Macbett’s fall and proclaiming Macol, then by fanfares and Macol’s entrance. Lady Duncan’s disclosure thus turns the intimate revelation of imprisonment and impersonation into immediate public consequence: the ruler whom she calls an impostor faces an organized alternative to his rule.

The sequence binds accusation, recognition, and succession together without making them identical. Banco and Duncan return as apparitions who challenge Macbett’s account of his own legitimacy; Lady Duncan returns as a living witness who can identify the deception behind his marriage and testify to his crimes. The guests’ fearful obedience gives way to the audible acclamation of Macol. At the feast, Macbett tries to command what counts as real and who may be called king. The scene answers with the dead, the restored rightful queen, and the approaching heir—each presence exposing a different part of the power he has seized.