The Second Murderer is one of two hired killers summoned by Macbeth in Act 3 to eliminate Banquo and his son Fleance. He appears only briefly—six lines of dialogue spread across two scenes—but his presence is crucial to the machinery of Macbeth’s tyranny. Unlike Macbeth, who murders Duncan with his own hands and carries the weight of that act throughout the play, Macbeth outsources the killing of Banquo to men already broken by circumstance. The Second Murderer’s motivation is desperation. When Macbeth asks him to commit murder, the Second Murderer responds: “I am one, my liege, / 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 a man so worn down by hardship that he has nothing left to lose. His willingness to kill comes not from ambition or loyalty, but from a kind of numb rage at his own suffering.
What makes the Second Murderer’s character significant is his passivity. He speaks only when spoken to, agrees immediately to the plan, and executes his orders without hesitation. Unlike Macbeth, who struggles with conscience before and after Duncan’s murder, the Second Murderer shows no internal conflict. He and his partner kill Banquo in the gathering darkness, and when Fleance escapes—the crucial failure that will haunt Macbeth for the rest of the play—the Second Murderer simply observes the fact: “We have lost / Best half of our affair.” There is regret, perhaps, but no anguish, no sense that this moment will circle back to destroy him. In this way, he represents the cost of Macbeth’s rise: other men become his instruments, bearing the guilt of his crimes without the crown he stole.
The Second Murderer embodies a darker truth about Macbeth’s Scotland. Macbeth believes he can contain his evil, compartmentalize his murders, keep his hands clean by using others. But the play suggests that such detachment is impossible. The Second Murderer and his fellow killer are collateral damage in Macbeth’s spiral. They commit murder for money and out of desperation, then vanish from the stage. We never know their fates, whether they survive to see Macbeth’s fall, or whether they die believing they served a king. Their erasure from the narrative—they appear and disappear with no resolution—mirrors the way Macbeth uses and discards the people around him. They are the unnamed cost of tyranny.
