BANQUO
All's well. I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters: To you they have show'd some truth.
MACBETH
I think not of them: Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve, We would spend it in some words upon that business, If you would grant the time.
BANQUO
At your kind'st leisure.
MACBETH
If you shall cleave to my consent, when 'tis, It shall make honour for you.
BANQUO
So I lose none In seeking to augment it, but still keep My bosom franchised and allegiance clear, I shall be counsell'd.
MACBETH
Good repose the while!
BANQUO
Thanks, sir: the like to you!
Exeunt BANQUO and FLEANCE
MACBETH
Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.
Exit Servant
Banquo finally brings up the topic of the witches, albeit tentatively. He distances himself from his thoughts of them through "dreamt"; he can claim them as uninvited, unwelcome thoughts, but it suggests too that it is not only Macbeth who is experiencing disturbed, troubled sleep. Banquo sets up a rise from Macbeth with his statement that "to you they have show'd some truth", neutrally registering what we are also thinking. Macbeth's response - "I think not of them" - is an outright lie. He puts distance between himself and Banquo, masking his thoughts and skirting acknowledgment through the indeterminate "that business". Whilst he evades conversation of the prophecies, he doesn't shut it off entirely, delaying it until "we can entreat an hour to serve", an imprecise, future moment which will never be realised. Instead, he tests out Banquo's loyalty with carefully ambiguous, tentative language, mediated by the conditional "if". He tells Banquo that "honour" shall come to him "if you shall cleave my consent": either 'if you agree with my advice' or, more threateningly, 'if you support me'. In the latter reading, "honour" is an exchange for silence, an exchange based on belief in the third prophecy. Banquo's response is equally cautious, reciprocating the language of equivocation. He holds back his feelings, but his desire to maintain autonomy suggests he suspects Macbeth's plotting. Banquo sets up the tension between "bosom" and "allegiance", or personal ethics and duty. He wants to keep his "bosom franchised", to keep the freedom to govern his own heart, realising though that he can lose favour both by isolating himself and (conversely) binding himself to Macbeth. The balance of "lose" and "augment" seems precarious: Banquo wants only to gain honour where there is no chance he can lose any that already exists, in stark contrast to the "vaulting ambition" of Macbeth and his rapid rise which will set up his consequent tragic fall from grace. With the evasion placing a barrier between the former friends, Banquo and Fleance exit. Macbeth sets the murder plot underway, establishing the a "strike upon the bell" as the signal for the all-clear once Lady Macbeth has drugged Duncan's servants (communicated tacitly through "my drink"). The servant's exit, with the plot now in motion, creates a midnight, solitary isolation: the conditions are right for Macbeth's fears to manifest themselves in the supernatural.Â