Duncan: The Good King Shakespeare Kills Quickly
First appears: Act 1, Scene 2
Duncan is a good king who is bad at reading people. He trusted the previous Thane of Cawdor, who betrayed him, and immediately gave that traitor's title to Macbeth, who will also betray him. 'There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face,' he says in Act 1, Scene 4. It is his epitaph.
He barely appears before he is murdered. Shakespeare does not give him much stage time, but uses what he has carefully. Duncan's warmth toward Macbeth and Banquo is genuine and unguarded. His praise for Lady Macbeth's hospitality in Act 1, Scene 6, just before he sleeps in her castle for the last time, is genuinely painful.
His murder happens offstage, which intensifies rather than lessens its horror. We see it through Macbeth's fragmented account (the daggers, the blood, the grooms asleep) and through Macduff's discovery of the body in Act 2, Scene 3.
Key Scenes
Famous Quotes
“There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face. He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust.”
Duncan — Act 1, Scene 4
Themes
Other Characters in Macbeth
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