The First Murderer is one of two men hired by Macbeth to kill Banquo and his son Fleance. He has no name, no history, no motive of his own—only desperation and circumstance. Macbeth approaches him and a Second Murderer in Act 3 with a calculated appeal: he tells them that Banquo has been their enemy, that fortune has wronged them, that they are men capable of taking action. The First Murderer accepts the work not because he hates Banquo, but because he has been worn down by life. “I am one, my liege,” he says, “whom the vile blows and buffets of the world / Have so incensed that I am reckless what I do to spite the world.” He is already broken before Macbeth finds him. What Macbeth offers is not a chance at revenge, but a permission to act on the rage that’s already in him.
In the murder scene itself, the First Murderer is brutally efficient. He and his associates set upon Banquo on the road to Dunsinane as darkness falls. Banquo cries out in betrayal—“O, treachery!”—and tells Fleance to run and seek revenge. The First Murderer strikes, and Banquo dies. But Fleance escapes into the darkness, and this failure matters enormously. The First Murderer has completed half his task, murdered the man but not the child, and this incompleteness will haunt Macbeth for the rest of the play. The murderer reports back to Macbeth with the news: Banquo is dead, but the son has fled. Macbeth’s response is to spiral further into paranoia and murder, ordering the slaughter of Macduff’s entire family—women and children included.
The First Murderer himself disappears from the play after this report. He has served his purpose: to show how a tyrant transforms ordinary men into instruments of his will, how desperation and resentment can be weaponized, how murder becomes just another transaction in a corrupted state. He is not evil by nature, but he becomes evil by necessity, by hunger, by the simple fact that Macbeth offers him coin and permission to act on impulses already festering inside him. He is Scotland’s sickness made flesh—not a villain with ambition, but a man with nothing left to lose, and that makes him dangerous.
