loyalty to the sovereign

Loyalty to the sovereign in Macbett is at once an oath, a political performance, and a bargain whose terms are never secure. Macbett repeatedly declares himself faithful to Duncan, but the drama sets those declarations against his appetite for reward and the ambition that the First Witch says he is concealing. The result is not a simple portrait of steadfast service: allegiance is voiced in absolute terms, while the scenes around it reveal how readily praise, property, obedience, and self-interest become entangled.

The oath and its public performance

Glamiss and Candor approach Macbett with praise for his fidelity to Duncan, even though Glamiss privately tells Candor that Macbett must not suspect their intentions and that they should act naturally. Macbett answers that he is loyal because he has taken the oath of allegiance. His claim presents fealty as a binding obligation, not merely a feeling or a judgment about Duncan’s character. But the audience has already been shown the conspirators’ concealed purpose, so their compliments are tactical, and Macbett’s answer becomes part of a scene in which everyone’s professions must be weighed against what they know or intend.

The praise escalates into a spectacle of reciprocal virtue. Macbett calls Duncan’s generosity legendary and says that Duncan always has the people’s good at heart. Glamiss and Candor respond with extravagant agreement, describing Duncan as perfect and as virtue itself. Macbett then declares that he would fight to the death against anyone who said otherwise. The sequence turns loyalty into demonstrative speech: each claim of virtue invites another, more emphatic pledge. Yet the audience sees that this chorus of approval is not transparent evidence of sincere agreement. Glamiss and Candor’s concealed conspiracy makes their reverence conspicuously instrumental, and Macbett’s willingness to make his loyalty a matter of life and death foreshadows the violence that service to the ruler can authorize.

Fealty as service and exchange

Macbett later sharpens his profession of devotion by describing himself as faithfulness personified, born faithful to Duncan as a dog or horse is faithful to its master. The comparison makes loyalty sound instinctive and unconditional, reducing the political subject to an animal bound to its owner. It is an extreme formulation, but the surrounding exchange exposes its material setting. Duncan promises Macbett the title of Baron Candor and Candor’s lands, and says that Macbett may inherit Candor’s wife and daughter if he likes. Macbett thanks him; when Duncan offers Banco the lands and property of Glamiss after Glamiss is captured and beheaded, Macbett again responds with gratitude.

The scene makes royal favor tangible as titles, estates, and captured property. Macbett and Banco say that serving Duncan is its own reward, but Macbett immediately adds that Duncan’s bounty satisfies their natural greed. That admission unsettles the ideal of selfless service without erasing the men’s declared allegiance: reward and loyalty operate together. Their gratitude culminates in a theatrical display of armed readiness, with Macbett drawing his sword and Banco brandishing his cleaver as they promise to go through Hell for Duncan. The weapons give physical force to their words, while the reference to greed makes clear that the sovereign’s generosity is also a source of personal gain.

The limits of professed loyalty

The First Witch directly challenges Macbett’s account of himself. She says that his ambition has been kindled, whatever explanations he gives, and that those explanations conceal his true intent. Macbett insists that he wants only to serve his sovereign; the First Witch dismisses the claim. This exchange places the language of loyalty beside an opposing interpretation of motive. Macbett’s declaration is not treated as proof of his innocence or even as a reliable account of his own desire. The conflict lies precisely between the identity he claims—as servant—and the ambition the Witch says his claim masks.

Macbett also offers a political rationale for the distribution of property: everything belongs to the king, and the king and all he has belong equally to the people, with the king looking after it for them. The formulation both acknowledges Duncan’s ownership and recasts the monarch as custodian of something held in common. It sits uneasily beside the scene in which Duncan grants rebels’ lands and households to his victorious followers. The play therefore gives loyalty an unstable political foundation: the sovereign is praised as generous, yet that generosity takes the form of transferring other people’s wealth and status to those who serve him.

Orders, rewards, and institutional duty

The strain between allegiance and expectation becomes explicit when Banco complains that Duncan has not given him his promised reward. He says that the title or the lands, if not both, should be his, and protests that Duncan cannot treat him this way. Macbett tells him that they will try more persuasive arguments, and, if those fail, stronger ones. His language leaves the method unspecified, but its escalation darkens what began as an appeal for royal favor. Loyalty here does not prevent grievance; instead, the failure to honor a promise creates pressure to make the sovereign listen.

A separate exchange over Candor shows the formal force of Duncan’s command. When Duncan asks why Candor has not been killed, Macbett replies that he was waiting for Duncan’s orders. Duncan gives the order to behead Candor. The moment distinguishes Macbett’s own authority as a military subordinate from the sovereign’s explicit command, and makes obedience concrete as a decision over a prisoner’s life. Elsewhere, in the world of Bérenger, The Architect describes police-superintendent work as one of his duties, reports Dany’s death as routine, and insists that the investigation follow its usual course. That procedural example is not presented as allegiance to a monarch; by contrast, it clarifies that the book also depicts authority operating through assigned duties and routine, rather than only through personal vows of fealty. In Macbett, the repeated declarations of loyalty remain inseparable from the ruler’s commands, the rewards he distributes, and the ambitions those arrangements fail to contain.