Shakespeare wrote the play during the reign of James I, a Scottish king with a well-documented fear of witches, which is where Shakespeare gets the idea for the most original difference between his and Holinshed's accounts of the story. Shakespeare shows the witches to be the spark for all of Macbeth’s wrongs and therefore a source of evil. He portrays them to be hideous hags, another thing that would cause the less educated members of the audience to be against witches. Everything that is said in the play that goes against witches is an attempt by Shakespeare to win over the king as an ally. King James had a fear of witches because before he became king of England, supposed witches made an attempt on his life. At the time the play was set the idea of witches was unheard of however at the time it was written witches were considered to be messengers sent by the devil. Another idea around at the time was “The Chain Of Being,” this is where there is a chain, going from god and the archangels at the top to the devil at the bottom. The idea is that, in killing Duncan, Macbeth became king when he shouldn’t have therefore breaking the chain of being and causing his downfall.
At the start of the play, Shakespeare confuses the audience with the way he bills Macbeth before he makes an appearance. He does this by associating Macbeth with both good and evil. In the first scene the three witches, or weird sisters, as the characters in the play call them, say they are to meet with Macbeth. This is an association with the witches, who at the time were considered to be the devils equivalent to angels, a definite sign of evil. Then in the very next scene his fellow soldiers name Macbeth as a war hero when the captains says, “For brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name.” This causes the audience to be confused because first Macbeth is linked with evil then he is praised for being a good soldier. Also, in the first scene, the witches give an insight into the theme of the play through their chant, “fair is foul, and foul is fair.” This shows that in the world of the play, good is evil and evil is good. This quote comes to the fore again when we first meet Macbeth, with his opening line virtually echoing that of the witches, “As fair and foul a day I have not seen,” another link with evil. The first scene opens with a clap of thunder, this is to grab the attention and quieten the audience as well as to set the scene, as Elizabethan audiences were often rowdy, due to the theatre being the main social gathering for people at the time.
Whilst the second scene is as much about praising Macbeth, there is a line that indicates the true savagery that lies within Macbeth’s character and which is shown later in the play with Macbeth being responsible for many murders. The line is “Till he unseam’d him from the nave to the chops.” This explains how Macbeth killed a man by slitting him from the belly button to the jaw, a horrific way of killing someone. Also in the second scene, the audience hears about how Macbeth is to become Thane of Cawdor from King Duncan and the Captain. This becomes more relevant in the third scene when Shakespeare uses dramatic irony because the three weird sisters tell Macbeth that he is the Thane of Cawdor, a fact that the audience know but the character of Macbeth does not.
In the third scene we finally meet Macbeth. He I with Banquo and they come across the three witches, they make predictions of the future for Macbeth and Banquo. Banquo dismisses the witches predictions as nothing more than a stab in the dark, Macbeth on the other hand takes them to heart as they appeal to his tragic flaw of ambition, a dramatic device used by Shakespeare that is similar to a Greek tragedy, where the hero has a flaw that in effect causes his or her downfall, because Macbeth has the flaw of being over ambitious. Macbeth’s ambition is sparked by the witches’ predictions because they say he is the Thane of Cawdor, dramatic irony by Shakespeare because the audience already know this but Macbeth does not, and that he will become King. Later on in the same scene Macbeth finds out that he is to become Thane of Cawdor. This is the witches’ first prediction come true in the eyes of Macbeth; again this triggers his tragic flaw. Macbeth then decides that in order to become King he would have to kill King Duncan. This is a sign of both ruthlessness and a lack of common sense because Duncan was older than Macbeth and therefore Macbeth could have become King after Duncan had died naturally.
The next scene however provides Macbeth with a reason for killing Duncan and that is that Duncan has chosen his son Malcolm to succeed him to the throne by naming him as Prince Of Cumberland. In order for Macbeth to be the successor to Duncan’s throne he would have had to be named as the Prince of Cumberland, so Malcolm being given the title will no doubt have disheartened him. Also disheartening for Macbeth is Duncan's line, “He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust.” This speaks of the previous Thane Of Cawdor and is disheartening because it means that Duncan cannot trust Macbeth more than he could trust a man who was a traitor to him. Macbeth
