“Spend it in some words upon _that_ business.”
To which he readily consents.
The “cursed thoughts,” then, are connected with his dreams about the
weird sisters.
At his next appearance the same thoughts agitate him in Macbeth’s
palace at Fores. His first words are—in soliloquy—
“Thou hast it now, king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,
As the weird women promis’d; and, I fear,
Thou play’dst most foully for’t: yet it was said
It should not stand in thy posterity,
But that myself should be the root and father
Of many kings. If there come truth from them
(As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine),
Why, by the verities on thee made good,
May they not be my oracles as well,
And set me up in hope? But, hush! no more.”
When it is recollected that, after the scene on the heath with the
soldiers, these are nearly all the words we have from Banquo, it seems
to be pretty clearly indicated that his thoughts at least were not
perfectly honest and what they should have been.
The weird sisters are but outward personifications of the evil thoughts
conceived and fermenting in the brains of Banquo and Macbeth; both high
in station, both generals in the king’s army, both friends, and both
nourishing evil wishes. They are visible only to these two friends; and
though they are represented as having an outer existence independent of
them, they are, metaphysically speaking, but embodiments of the hidden
thoughts and desires of Banquo and Macbeth; as such they are a new and
terrible creation, differing from the vulgar flesh-and-blood witches of
Middleton. They look not like the inhabitants of the earth; they vanish
into thin air; wild, vague, mysterious, they come and go, like devilish
thoughts that tempt us, and take shape before us, as if they had come
from the other world. The devils that haunt us and tempt us come out of
ourselves, like the weird sisters of Macbeth.