Shortly afterwards Ross and Angus bring news to Macbeth that he is Thane of Cawdor. Ross says,
‘And for an earnest of a greater honour, He bade me, from him, call thee Thane of Cawdor…, hail most worthy Thane! For it is thine’.
With this news, Macbeth reconsiders what the witches had said, ‘Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor. The greatest is behind’.
Straight after this Macbeth immediately begins to plan his methods of obtaining these positions which if he is to be king then it involves murdering the king of Scotland. This is an example of what was once fair, a loyal and brave warrior of Scotland has become foul, an ambitious traitor.
Act one scene five sees Macbeth and Lady Macbeth planning to kill Duncan who is the king of Scotland.
On line fifteen, Lady Macbeth is talking about Macbeth, ‘Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness, To catch the nearest way’. Lady Macbeth feels that Macbeth is too good to murder Duncan. She goes on and says to spirits, ‘unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe top full of direst cruelty’. She wants to be cruel like the witches so she can carry out the wicked, evil plans to murder Duncan.
Macbeth arrives later and Lady Macbeth says, ‘ look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under’t’. She is telling Macbeth how to conduct the murder; she is persuading him to go through with it and not change his mind.
In scene seven of the first act, Macbeth starts off with his big soliloquy. He prepares for murder. He knows it is a great sin but Lady Macbeth forces him to go through with it and kill Duncan. Macbeth is trying to change his own mind about the murder of Duncan. He comes up with reasons not to kill Duncan as well as reasons to kill him. Later in this scene Duncan is murdered. Macbeth has now become foul or evil.
Macbeth becomes more and more foul as he is now planning the murder of Banquo. He hires three murderers to kill his ‘friend’ Banquo in order to prevent any threat or opposition to Macbeth’s reign.
In the beginning of scene one of act three, Banquo starts off by saying, ‘Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all, as the weird women promis’d: and I fear, thou play’dst most foully for’t’. Banquo suspects Macbeth killed Duncan. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth enter this scene as king and queen for the first time. All but Macbeth exit the scene and Macbeth starts plotting the second murder which is of Banquo and Fleance. The word ‘foul’ is now strongly being associated with Macbeth.
In scene three of act three Banquo is murdered by the three murderers but Fleance escapes.
In her first appearances, Lady Macbeth is presented as an ambitiously evil and foul character that will do whatever it takes to get what she wants. We can see this motivation when she says, ‘How tender tis to love the babe that milks me; I would, while it was smiling in my face have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, and dashed the brains out’, in scene six of act one. In these lines, Lady Macbeth threatens that she would smash her baby’s head if it meant achieving their goals. After killing Duncan and becoming queen, she realises her mistakes and is driven mentally ill by it. In her case, she has gone from what was once foul, to become fair – so this is ironic.
Macbeth has believed every thing the witches have said and they have led him to the foul or evil side. Macbeth has replaced his belief in God with a belief in them. Near the end of the play, just when he is about to die, he says, ‘And be these juggling fiends no more believ’d’, this is ironic because he does listen to them when he is alive but he doesn’t when he is about to die.
Throughout the play, Macbeth, the general mood is one of deceit and betrayal. There is lots of positive diction in the beginning but then there is suddenly more negative diction such as ‘fear’, ‘killed’ and ‘cruelty’. What appears to be fair is foul.