King Duncan
Duncan is the ideal monarch: generous, trusting, and divinely appointed. His murder is the play's inciting catastrophe — the act that disrupts the Great Chain of Being and unleashes chaos across Scotland. Shakespeare deliberately presents Duncan as virtuous to maximise the horror of regicide; he is less a fully developed character than a symbol of the order that Macbeth destroys.
Key Themes
Duncan embodies ideal, divinely sanctioned kingship — generous, trusting, and meek in power — serving as the benchmark against which Macbeth's tyranny is measured and condemned.
Duncan is tragically unable to read deception, admitting 'There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face', and his trusting nature makes him fatally vulnerable to those who perform loyalty while plotting murder.
Duncan himself is uncorrupted, but his murder is the act that corrupts everything around it — Scotland's political order, Macbeth's soul, and the natural world itself all unravel from this single crime.
Though Duncan never experiences guilt himself, his murder generates guilt in others — he is the source of the blood that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth can never wash from their hands or minds.
Character Arc
Rewards Macbeth with the title Thane of Cawdor, calls him 'valiant cousin', and stays at his castle in complete trust. His generosity and openness make him admirable but also vulnerable — he admits he cannot read treachery in faces: 'There's no art / To find the mind's construction in the face.'
Killed offstage in his sleep — the most defenceless state possible. His murder is described through its effects (Macbeth's guilt, the unnatural omens) rather than shown directly, preserving his dignity and emphasising the cosmic horror of regicide.
Key Quotes
“There's no art / To find the mind's construction in the face.”
Act 1, Scene 4
Devastating dramatic irony: Duncan says this about the *previous* Thane of Cawdor's betrayal, unaware that the *new* Thane of Cawdor (Macbeth) is already plotting his murder. It encapsulates the play's theme that appearances can never be trusted.
Theme Links
Duncan articulates the play's central problem — that outward appearance reveals nothing of inner intent — yet tragically fails to apply this lesson to the very man standing before him.
The line reveals both Duncan's virtue (he trusts because he is trustworthy) and his vulnerability as king — his openness, admirable in a person, is a political weakness that a tyrant like Macbeth will exploit.
Duncan's inability to detect corruption reflects his own moral purity, but it also shows that goodness alone cannot protect against evil — the corrupt will always exploit the trusting.
“This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air / Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself.”
Act 1, Scene 6
Duncan's appreciation of Macbeth's castle is laced with dramatic irony — the audience knows Lady Macbeth is inside planning his murder. The gentle language ('pleasant', 'sweetly') contrasts with the violence to come, and the image of welcoming domesticity concealing death reinforces the theme of appearance vs reality.
Theme Links
The castle appears 'pleasant' and its air 'sweet', but the audience knows it conceals murder — Duncan's senses are completely deceived by the hospitable surface hiding lethal intent.
Duncan's trusting arrival as a guest under Macbeth's roof invokes the sacred bond of hospitality, making the planned murder a triple violation: of kinship, of subject-king loyalty, and of the host-guest relationship.
Duncan's innocent appreciation deepens the guilt of his murder — Macbeth kills not a tyrant or a stranger but a trusting guest who praised his home, amplifying the moral horror that will haunt him.
Key Relationships
Duncan trusts Macbeth completely, making the betrayal a violation of every bond: kinsman, subject, host. Macbeth himself catalogues these obligations in his Act 1 soliloquy, proving he murders with full awareness of the moral enormity.
Duncan names Malcolm as his successor (Prince of Cumberland), which Macbeth sees as an obstacle. Malcolm's eventual restoration completes a structural arc: legitimate kingship is temporarily disrupted but ultimately reasserted.
Writer’s Methods
Shakespeare keeps Duncan offstage during his murder — we never see the act, only its aftermath. This choice preserves the sacral quality of kingship (the audience doesn't witness the violation of God's anointed) and focuses attention on the psychological effects on Macbeth. Duncan's dramatic irony — trusting the very people who will kill him — makes the audience complicit: we watch, knowing what he cannot, creating tension and moral discomfort.
Grade 7+ Point
WOWDuncan embodies the medieval concept of the king's two bodies (theorised by Ernst Kantorowicz): the mortal body that can be killed and the political/divine body that represents cosmic order. His murder destroys the mortal body but cannot destroy the principle — which is why Malcolm's restoration at the end is inevitable. Macbeth's crime is not just murder but an assault on the divine order itself, which is why nature responds with 'unnatural' omens (darkness at noon, horses eating each other).
Key Vocabulary
The killing of a king — the ultimate crime in the Jacobean worldview
The belief that monarchs are appointed by God and answerable only to Him
The Elizabethan/Jacobean hierarchy: God → King → Man → Animals → Plants
When the audience knows something a character does not
Exam Tip
AODuncan is best used in essays about kingship or appearance vs reality. Don't spend too long on him as a character — instead use him as a benchmark: his ideal kingship makes Macbeth's tyranny measurable. The contrast between Duncan's trust and Macbeth's paranoia is a powerful structural argument.