Macbeth: Act 2 – Summary Page
Macbeth: Act 2 – In Short
In his nervousness, Macbeth gets a hallucination of a bloody dagger and hesitates to kill Duncan, but Lady Macbeth encourages him to proceed with the murder. While Duncan is asleep, Macbeth kills him with a dagger and returns to his wife to give her the news. He is now overwhelmed with a sense of guilt and nervousness. Lady Macbeth rebukes him for this and she herself goes to the crime scene to put the dagger back there.
The next morning, when Macduff and Lenox (two noblemen or lords) come, Macbeth has a conversation with Lenox while Macduff goes to awaken the King, and the murder is discovered. Macbeth kills the King’s guards out of anger and protects himself from suspicion.
Malcom and Donalbain (Duncan’s two sons) escape to England and Ireland out of fear that they may get killed too. Meanwhile, everyone believes that the two guards killed the King on orders of Malcolm and Donalbain who have now run away. Macbeth now becomes the King of Scotland as a kinsman of the dead king.
Scene-wise Summary & Analysis
Questions & Answers on Act 2
Portions of this article were developed with the assistance of AI tools and have been carefully reviewed, verified and edited by Jayanta Kumar Maity, M.A. in English, Editor & Co-Founder of Englicist.
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