Just before Macbeth kills Duncan, he imagines a dagger leading him to Duncan’s room. After this, (act 2, scene 1) Macbeth says, “Wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate’s offerings.” What he means is that he’s sleeping comfortably complemented by the curtains surrounding his bed, but the nightmares are disturbing his sleep being represented by the image of him not sleeping within the curtains properly. So Macbeth is blaming his vision of the dagger on the supernatural. He’s saying that the air-drawn dagger was a nightmare he had at night being sent to him by the witches. The dagger he saw was air-drawn. Normally when you draw a dagger, you draw a dagger, you draw it from your pocket, but it has just come from the middle of the air, no-one has actually drawn it. This could be the witches trying to tempt him to keep walking along to Duncan’s room with the dagger, but not actually up to the point of killing him. When Macbeth does kill Duncan, he his responsible for his own actions, the witches did not force him to do it.
Later in the play, Macbeth becomes a tyrant. He is very suspicious of the people around him, people who could be likely to overthrow him. He knows Malcolm and Macduff are in England collecting an army. So to stop his worry, Macbeth goes to the witches’ cave with the intention of finding his future. He says (act 3, scene 4) “I will to the Weird Sisters. More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know by the worst means.” Macbeth now trusts the witches and willingly goes to meet with them.
The next scene involving the witches is a scene with Hecate and one of the witches. Hecate is the Greek goddess of witchcraft and is effectively the ruler of all the other 3 witches. Here Hecate is angry with the witches and is speaking in rhyming couplets. When she says, “He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear, His hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear.” This means the witches are going to use apparitions to make Macbeth over-confident and stop him believing that he can live for ever. They’re going to make Macbeth over-ambitious, not take any precautions and think he’s immortal. Everything he wants to do can be done easily. This could leave the audience in more suspense about what the witches are going to do to Macbeth next and make them wonder more about the fate of Macbeth.
As soon as Macbeth meets the witches, the witches start off by casting a spell in their cauldron, making some sort of potion for Macbeth to drink. He drinks this and this results in him seeing four apparitions. The first one is an armed head saying beware of Macduff. Next is a baby saying, “… for no-one of woman born shall harm Macbeth”, next is the one saying that Macbeth shall never be beaten until Birnam wood moves to Dunsinane and then finally Macbeth sees a line of eight kings descended from Banquo.
The words spoken by the first apportion seem clear enough to Macbeth. He notes that, “thou hast harped my fear aright,” meaning that this supports Macbeth’s suspicions of Macduff. On hearing the words of the second apparition, Macbeth interprets it to mean that Macduff will in fact not harm him, as Macduff – and surely all men – is ‘of a woman born’. Even so, Macbeth is determined to make sure that Macduff can’t harm him: “But yet I’ll make assurance double sure.” The words of the third apparition seem quite puzzling. It says, (act 4, scene 1) “Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him.” What this means that Macbeth can’t be harmed until the actual movement of the trees uprooting themselves, moving and re-planting themselves on Dunsinane Hill. Trees can’t move by themselves. These words give Macbeth even further confidence, as he takes them to imply that he will never be beaten in battle: “That will never be. Who can impress the forest, bid the tree? Unfix his earth-bound roots?
Finally, Macbeth asks about what the witch said earlier in the play (act 1 scene 3) about Banquo’s descendents becoming kings, he says, “Yet my heart Throbs to know one thing… shall Banquo’s issue over reign in this kingdom?” The witches refuse to answer that question initially, Macbeth replies with a threat to curse them if they don’t do so. At last, the witches conjure up a fourth apparition which is a show of eight kings descended from Banquo. Because the previous predictions by the witches have come true, Macbeth believes this one.
Looking back on the play, the witches appear in various points of the play and appear very evil. But they’re only trying to tempt, not force Macbeth to become king. The witches don’t use any magic on him; they don’t tempt him with rewards for him becoming king. It is Macbeth’s over-ambition which drives Macbeth to kill all the necessary people to become and stay king. Macbeth is the person responsible for what he does. Macbeth chose to react to the witches predictions in the way he did. Macbeth controls his own final destiny.
Although the play designates three witches explicitly, it has been suggested that Lady Macbeth does in fact act as a fourth witch. This is because, like the three witches, she does not carry out any evil acts herself – instead, it is the result of what she says to Macbeth that he carries out the acts that he does. In today’s terms we would say that both Lady Macbeth and the three witches use psychological means to get Macbeth to carry out the murders. The audience sees her as an evil and really ruthless woman towards her husband.
The first thing that implies that Lady Macbeth is a witch is that she calls on evil spirits to help her act like a man. She says, (act 1, scene 5) “Come you spirits, that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here … make thick my blood.” By saying unsex, she’s asking spirits to take away her female qualities and replace them with masculine qualities. She wants to carry out the murder of Duncan herself. In Jacobean times, women were always considered to be gentle creatures and would need some courage and ruthlessness to do something as horrific as committing regicide. If she was to be given masculine qualities she would then be able to do this. Women wouldn’t normally feel like behaving like this unless they had some sort of supernatural powers. In addition to support this, Lady Macbeth says, “Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, And dashed the brains out.” Here she’s saying she smashed a baby’s brain out. Women were known as gentle creatures – they would always look after their babies with their utmost care. But here she’s smashing a baby’s brain out of its head but this is the violence associated with men. This ties in with her wish to be unsexed. She would love to be violent, devious and courageous like a man, and this is further proof of that.
Another thing about Lady Macbeth is her ability to forcefully convince Macbeth and tell him what to do. Although Macbeth ultimately makes his own mind up that he should go and kill Duncan, it is Lady Macbeth that manipulates him to help him think like that. She says, (act 1, scene 7) “And live a coward in thine own esteem, letting I dare not’ wait upon’ ‘I would,’ Like the poor cat I’ th’ adage?” She saying that if Macbeth wants to kill Duncan he must be prepared and never be afraid at all; like if a cat wants fish in some water, it must not be afraid of getting its feet wet.
During the course of the play, Lady Macbeth has no interaction with the other witches at all. She doesn’t have a cauldron, she does not cast spells, she doesn’t conjure up any apparitions to show Macbeth, she doesn’t predict anything in the future like the other witches do and she never meets Hecate who is the Greek goddess of witchcraft. Therefore I conclude that she is a witch but has nothing to do with the other three witches.
But towards the end of the play, a role reversal has taken place between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. At the end of the play, Macbeth feels like he’s unstoppable and can rule over Scotland for ever and that he’s invincible. However, Lady Macbeth feels very guilty at the end; so guilty that she can no longer sleep and she sleepwalks. An onlooker says, (act 5, scene 1) “take forth paper, fold it, write upon’t, read it… yet all this while in most fast sleep.” This means that she’s doing this all in her sleep. She is factually asleep but she’s doing all these writing tasks at the same time. She also says, “Out dammed spot, out I say!” She’s seeing imaginary blood on her hands because she helped Macbeth kill Duncan, and she’s seeing his blood on her hands. She’s so guilty that she’s seeing those things, the she kills herself. Witches are not known to have a guilty conscience; so much that one would kill herself. So, yes she’s a witch in terms of what she’s done and how she managed to kill Macbeth, but she kills herself and the end which could be evidence that she isn’t a real witch.
