They play opens with a brief meeting of the three witches, which strikes the key note of the play. The apparent confusion implied in their words – “Fair is foul and foul is fair”
The witches’ words have echoed by Macbeth when he said that “so fair and foul a day I have never seen”. Their words make us confused about what is going on and what will be happening later on in the play.
Mischief making is the favourite pastime of the witches. They plan: “Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ the Tiger
But I’m a sieve I’ll thither sail
And like a rat without a tail”.
They plan to torment sailor because his wife refuse to give him chestnuts.
When the witches meet Macbeth and Barque they greet Macbeth as thane of Glamis, and the thane of Cawdor, and predict that he shall be the king of Scotland. Of Banquo, the witches predict that he will beget kings. When Ross and Angus arrive immediately afterwards, and inform Macbeth about the conferment by King Duncan, of the title of the thane of Cawdor on him, Macbeth hopefully begins to look forward to the fulfilment of the final prediction that is of his becoming king:
“My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical
Shaken so my single state of man”.
Thus Macbeth is greatly influenced by the prophecies of the witches which give birth to evil thought in his mind of murdering king Duncan.
The prophecy of the witches had made a deep impression upon Macbeth’s mind. When Duncan nominates Malcolm to be the heir to the throne, Macbeth thinks it to be an obstacle in the way of him becoming king. He says himself:
“Stars, hid your fires,
Let not light see my black and deep desires”.
So, the thought of murdering Duncan seems now to have taken firm root in his mind. It is evident that the witches have stimulated in Macbeth an ambition which would have remained dormant if the witches would make no prophecy. Macbeth says:
“This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good”.
It is seemed that he can not decide what he should do, actually he is struggling between his ambition and conscience. But the witches are not fully responsible for Duncan’s murder. It was Lady Macbeth who gives the fuel to the fire of Macbeth’s ambition to kill Duncan.
Lady Macbeth is informed through a letter by Macbeth, describing the brief meeting with the weird sisters, and the good fortune promised to him on going through this letter she jumps to the conclusion that the shortest way for her husband to attain the throne is by assassinating the present king, Duncan she knows that Macbeth does not possess the necessary wickedness which he needs in the present situation. She says: “Thus thou must do if thou have it”. Therefore, she decides to give him the words of encouragement which will drive away all the scruples and fears which may come to him.
When a messenger gives her the news of Duncan’s impending visit to her castle; she readily looks upon it as the required opportunity to dispose of Duncan. At that time she invokes the supernatural spirits to come to her aid:
“Come, you spirits
That tends on mortal thoughts, unsex me here
And fill me, from the crown to the toe top – full
Of direst cruelty”.
She is calling the evil spirits who provide murderous intentions and rid her of all feminine weaknesses.
When Macbeth arrives, she greets him in terms of the prophecies made by the witches and goes straight to the point. When he tells her that Duncan is coming to their castle, and will leave the next day. She straight away hints at the proposed murder that Duncan will never go back from there. She wigs him to get ready for the task of assassination. Then she advises him in the following manner:
“Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it”
She is enticing him to be deceptive – making her sound cunning and clever. She is corrupting him.
The king Duncan arrives and is suitably greeted by Lady Macbeth. After the arrival of Duncan, Macbeth is tormented by his conscience.
Lady Macbeth too had given evidence of Macbeth’s strong conscience when she says that he does not have that “illness” which should accompany ambition. Macbeth fully feels that enormity of his proposed crime. In his soliloquy in Act 1, scene V Macbeth gives voice to all the factors which oppose his proposal to murder Duncan. In Act I, Scene VII, he says:
“He’s here in double trust:
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, strong both”.
Duncan is his king, Kinsman and guest. His conscience is sharp enough to make him realise that it is only ambition that spurs him to the crime. At this point his conscience appears to gain the upper hand and he decides against the murder. He tells Lady Macbeth:
“We will proceed no further in this business”.
However, we must note that behind this decision there is also a strong element of fear – the fear of consequences of the murder. Thus the decision cannot be wholly ascribed to the force of conscience: “we but teach bloody instruction which, being taught, when to plague the inventor.”
Imperial justice turns the evil means we employ against others into instruments of our own destruction.
When Macbeth expresses his fear of the consequences of failure, she assures him that failure is impossible. If only Macbeth shows courage to act. To tempt Macbeth into action she outlines the evidently fool – proof plan she has chalked out. When Duncan is asleep, his two guards will be reduced to a state of drunken stupor ant it will be possible to put on them the guilt of the ‘great quell’: it is too mean a task on the part of general to kill the king and put the blame on the guars of Duncan. The practicality of her scheme and her reproaches drive away Macbeth’s scruples. He cannot help to plan:
“I am settled and bend up each corporal agent to this terrible feat”.
Ultimately by Lady Macbeth, Macbeth kills King Duncan. Thus Lady Macbeth’s influence upon her husband plays a crucial role in developing the main action of the play. It is that the thought of murdering Duncan initially comes to Macbeth’s mind from his meeting with the witches, though he never tells in the play. But without Lady Macbeth’s instigation’s, the thought might probably never have been transformed into action.
After murdering a sleeping man Macbeth lost his peace of mind. He heard a voice crying “sleep no more”. Because Macbeth has murdered sleep. He is afraid of thinking about what he has done.
Macbeth utters the following lines in bitter agony:
“To know my dead, ‘t were best now know myself. Wake Duncan with thy knocking: would thou couldst!”
Actually Macbeth want to remain permanently lost in thought than to be fully conscious of the nature of his deed.
To conclude we may say that Lady Macbeth is the female counterpart of the evil which is presented in this play by Macbeth. She supplements the part played by the witches in bringing Macbeth’s secret ambition to surface, and her part, in fact, goes far beyond that of the witches. That is why she has rightly been called a “fiend like queen” by malcolm. It is she who is responsible for the tragedy of her husband.
