appear so strange toandthat they cannot tell
what they are or even whether they are alive or not. Even after speaking to them, Banquo doubts
their existence:
Were such things here as we do speak
about?
Or have we eaten on the insane root
That takes the reason
prisoner?
Until they saw the witches, the two generals
were apparently of one heart and mind, but the meeting on the heath sends them down separate
paths, Banquo remaining loyal and honest andadopting a policy of deception and concealment in
which appearance and reality necessarily diverge. Upon 's being created Prince of Cumberland, he
warns himself to hide his true nature andgives him the same warning: "look like the
innocent flower/But be the serpent under't."
After the murder of , the
Macbeths have to pile deception on deception and murder on murder to cling on to power.
Ironically, it is an apparition of the honest Banquo ("Unreal mockery," as Macbeth
calls it) that forces Macbeth to reveal his real nature at the feast. It is only at the end of
the play, however, that Macbeth comes to accept the unreality behind the appearance of substance
in both the witches' words and life itself. When he realizes thatwill kill him, he
exclaims:
And be these juggling fiends no more
believed,
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise
to our ear,
And break it to our hope.
And a
little earlier, on being told of his wife's death, he cries out that even life itself is not
what it appears:
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor
player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no
more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying
nothing.
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