The name of Macbeth is introduced and a connection is therefore established between themselves and Macbeth.
Their closing lines,
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair
Hover through the fog and filthy air,” gives us a major clue to what the witches’ objectives are.
They find whatever is good, evil and whatever is evil they find good. They seek therefore, to turn goodness into evil and this directly links to the events concerning Macbeth that develop in the play.
Shakespeare uses dramatic methods to display the witches in Act 1 scene 3. We can see the evil in the witches by the way they torment a sailor just because his wife didn’t give into their demands for chestnuts. They could have tortured his wife physically but they decided to do it mentally. The witches did this by torturing her husband, the sailor, by denying him sleep. They appear to get great pleasure from being malicious in the way that they torture the sailor. As well as denying him sleep they produced a great storm, it was so great because it would last, “Sennights nine times nine,” and “drain him dry as hay.”
The spell and the way they chant it adds to the mystery surrounding the witches, like the way the use the pilot’s thumb to help in the sailor’s torment.
The witches dance in a circle to the beat of Macbeth’s drum in movements of three,
“Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,
And thrice again, to make up nine.”
The number three seems to have a magical significance in Macbeth concerning the witches.
On Banquo’s first encounter with the witches, he describes their physical appearance as,
“So withered and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th’inhabitants o’th’earth,
And yet are on’t.”
We begin to get a clear picture of the witches’ appearance, Banquo then says,
“You should be women
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.”
Elizabethans believed that women could lure men into committing sin and they became known as temptresses.
We can see that Banquo is nearly amused by the witches and queries their prophecies calmly, unlike Macbeth who reacts very differently to the witches and what they have to say. Macbeth seems to be dumbfounded by them, “rapt withal.”
The prophecies are in rhyming couplets. They do not tell Macbeth or Banquo how to act; instead they stay neutral and let them act on their own accords.
The audience are more aware of the witches than Macbeth and Banquo, we know that Macbeth became Thane of Cawdor by his own actions. The witches are successful in challenging Macbeth’s morals.
Perhaps Macbeth was all along planning to murder Duncan to become King and all the witches have done is brought this thought to the fore.
Macbeth tries to discard the first thoughts of murder playing on his mind, announcing that he will leave everything to chance, “If chance will have me King, why, chance my crown me without my stir.”
At the end of the scene Macbeth still has some unanswered questions and in his mind is trying to plan out his future.
Macbeth takes sanctuary in a lie, pretending that his, “dull brain was wrought with things forgotten,” when in fact, he has been reflecting on the future and not in the past. This minute lie may seem harmless but it is the first sign of evil developing in Macbeth, the fact that he feels that he must cover these thoughts up shows us that he knew what he is thinking is wrong.
Later on in the play we start to consider Lady Macbeth as a possible fourth witch by the way she calls on evil, “Come ye spirits that tend on mortal thoughts,” would immediately make Elizabethan audiences distinguish her as a witch. She wants to become a witch and remove all the goodness within her, to persuade her husband to murder Duncan.
I think that Macbeth is under the witches’ control when later on in the play, he goes to them instead of them coming to him, “I will tomorrow to the weird sisters, more shall they speak. For I am bent to know by the worst means the worst.”
The three apparitions forewarn Macbeth’s fate: a head foretelling his decapitation of Macduff, a bloody child, representing Macduff being “untimely cut from the womb”, and a child crowned with a tree in his hand, representing Malcolm coming to Dunsinane carrying a bough. These apparitions suck Macbeth deeper into the witches’ confidence.
Macbeth takes the witches’ advice too seriously, he does not realise that they are only showing him his fate. He takes what he wants from the apparitions and nothing else, which is an unwise mistake that makes death unavoidable. Macbeth even thanks the witches, “Whate’er thou art, for thy good caution thanks.”
Macbeth is continually giving into evil, and letting the witches entice him into more and more danger.
In Macbeth, I think that the witches play a big role in Macbeth’s eventual downfall. Although they do not directly instruct him on what to do, in my opinion I think that they persuade Macbeth to kill Duncan in order to be King.
In every Shakespearean tragedy, the hero always has a tragic flaw, which leads to his or her own downfall. Macbeth’s tragic flaw in my opinion is that he is too weak, easily led and does not think of the consequences of his actions.
