Why does duncan's murder take place offstage?

Answer 1

Many murders in Shakespearean theater took place off stage because theaters did not have curtains. Therefore, the character had to be killed offstage, carried offstage after their murder, or left onstage for the duration of the play. However, this did not stop Shakespeare from having both Banquo and Macduff's son killed onstage before the last scene in Macbeth. Why did he not do the same for Duncan?

One major factor may be the fact that Duncan was a king. The idea of someone murdering a king was horrible enough; to actually depict it would be worse. The government did not want people to see how easily the monarch could be disposed of. Of course Shakespeare had already shown the deaths of Richard II, Henry VI, Edward V and Julius Caesar on stage. (Of course the English kings had been deposed and Caesar wasn't technically a king, but still . . .)

Perhaps Shakespeare, with his cunning eye for the dramatic, saw that there would be more tension in watching Lady Macbeth as she waits for the news from Macbeth than in watching the murder. As well, it gives the opportunity to have both Macbeth and Lady M soliloquize while the other is in the bedchamber. So perhaps it is a sign of his maturity as a playwright--if he was writing the play at the same time as Titus Andronicus he would not have missed the chance to show the blood and gore.

Answer 2

Shakespeare was no doubt trying to increase the tension, which could more easily be done by having Lady M onstage worrying if the murder was going well than actually showing the murder. The murder might have been shocking or horrifying but it would not increase tension.

There is no technical reason or legal reason why he could not have shown the murder if he chose to. In fact, he portrays similar murders in a number of plays.

Answer 3

These are actually two questions. It is not that Shakespeare is squeamish about having people murdered on stage, since he has Banquo, Lady MacDuff and MacDuff's son die onstage. Clearly it is also not because it was impossible to show people being murdered on stage.

The reason the grooms are murdered offstage is that we are not aware that they are going to be killed until Macbeth says, "Oh, yet I do repent me of my fury that I did kill them." The audience feels, like MacDuff and Lady Macbeth, that this is a surprise and a bit of an unpleasant one at that. The audience is put into their place by being kept in the dark until that point. Lady Macbeth, in particular, thought that the night's business had been put in her dispatch, but now Macbeth is taking things into his own hands. It surprises her and she doesn't like it. In fact it frightens her.

As for the murder of Duncan, part of Shakespeare's motive may have been to hold back on the more shocking stuff until later in the play. (In Julius Caesar, for example, many people think that the play goes downhill after the murder of Caesar.) It is also possible that having Macbeth offstage gave him a chance to portray Lady Macbeth onstage, fretting about whether Macbeth is doing the murder right ("I laid their daggers ready, he could not miss 'em") and thus building up tension. There may also have been practical considerations--since Duncan disappears from the play in the second act, the actor may have been available for doubling, and having him onstage would give him less time to change costume. Also, the stage would have to be set as Duncan's bedroom temporarily which is a lot of trouble to show something which could be more easily and more effectively told by one of the characters. What would showing the murder tell us that "Your royal father's murder'd!" does not?

And finally, it was perhaps more politically expedient not to show a monarch being assasinated especially when Guy Fawkes had just tried doing just that. It was a bit of a touchy subject.