This chant serves to strengthen the feeling of turmoil and unrest.
We next meet the witches on the “heath”. Their evilness is intensified as they regale to each other a spell the first witch has cast upon a woman who would not give her a chestnut:
“He shall live a man forbid”
She has cast a spell; whereby the woman’s husband, who is captain of a ship, will not sleep or drink and will live through his return journey home suffering:
“Here I have a pilots thumb,”
The witch is directing the boat, so that it will become shipwrecked. This serves to show pure evil and reinforce the belief that witches controlled the weather.
Macbeth comes upon the heath with Banquo his close friend and alli:
“So foul and fair a day I have not seen.”
Macbeth reiterates the very words the witches had used in their chant. This could signify a connection between them or has Macbeth, unknowingly, already been affected by their ministrations? This would intensify their evilness. He has possibly unknowingly stepped into their world. The witches bid Macbeth welcome as if he was already king, they chant his name:
“All hail Macbeth, hail thee, Thane of Cawdor.”
This is the first prophecy Macbeth is Thane of Glamis, not Cawdor.
“All hail Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter.”
The second prophecy tells Macbeth he will be king. Macbeth stands and listens to the witches, he wants to hear more. Banquo tries to break through the spell that seems to have been cast upon Macbeth, “rapt withal” this describes him to be in an engrossing fantasy.
The witches then talk to Banquo:
“Thou shalt get kings,”
This prophecy causes Macbeth to demand more. The witches then vanish, leaving Macbeth pondering on these revelations. The witches have sown the seeds of change, they have fuelled his ambition; this could prove to be a fault within Macbeth. Banquo is trying to disregard both the witches and their comments:
“Win us with honest trifles, to betray ‘s in deepest consequence”
However, Macbeth’s ambition has been awakened.
When Macbeth is the made Thane of Cawdor after his execution, he believes even more so that what the witches for saw is true. He is starting to believe that he will be King; the evil is starting to surface within him:
“Do not hope your children shall be kings,”
He thinks this to himself regarding his friend’s children. He wants to be king.
In Act1 Scene5, we see Lady Macbeth acting very much as she could have been cast as the fourth witch. She encourages Macbeth, who at this time in the play is the weaker partner in the crime, to get rid of Duncan, “provided for”. She wants to become as one with the evil spirits, her need for the power they have is driving her:
“Come you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here
And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull
Of direst cruelty;”
She wants to have no remorse, as would a witch. She wants to be strong to guide her husband to make the right choices for both of them. His first choice is whether or not to kill Duncan. She encourages and cajoles him, not unlike the witches when they met him upon the heath:
“you shall put
This nights great business into my dispatch,
Which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely sovereign”
We meet the witches once again in Act 4 Scene 1; they are creating a revolting “charm” for Macbeth. This is where the much-used rhyme “double, double toil and trouble” comes from. They are chanting over the evil brew; which includes:
“ finger of a birth strangled babe ditch delivered by a drab”
“liver of blaspheming Jew”
These are but two examples of the vile repugnant offerings the witches make to the pot. This potion has been officiated over by Hecate herself who is queen of the witches; this serves to intensify how much evil is being done that night. The audience would have been horrified by what was being concocted; Shakespeare’s use of describing the contents would clarify the witches evilness.
Macbeth arrives and demands to know what the witches are doing. He wants an insight further into the future, he wants to know how they have fortold the events which have happened:
“Even till destruction sicken: answer me to what I ask you.”
Shakespeare reinforces the belief that witches are deceiving Macbeth in this scene. What the apparitions show him serve only to bolster his ambition even further. The first apparition of an armoured head tells Macbeth to be aware of Macduff; this coincides with Macbeths fear of Macduff. He believed it was Macbeth who had killed Duncan. However, it could be a prophecy as in the final act it is Macduff who cuts Macbeth’s head off. Once again, the witches have lulled him into a false sense of security. The second apparition is that of a child covered in blood:
“laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.”
He now thinks he is invincible, nobody can take away his sovereignty; he is starting to believe he is at one with the witches. However, what he doesn’t know is that Macduff was born by caesarean section, therefore in the conventional sense he was not born of woman. Again, he has been deceived.
The third apparition is that of a crowned child:
“And wears upon his baby-brow the round
And top of sovereignty?”
The child tells him:
“Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill”
Macbeth has heard what he wanted to hear; trees don’t move, therefore he must be destined to be King for a long time. The witches have shown everything he wanted to see. The witches final apparition is that of Banquo’s heirs, since Macbeth is so convinced by the witches other three apparitions; he chooses to believe that he will hold onto the realm. He has become so conceited he is blind to the truth.
Shakespeare cleverly played with his audience’s interest in the super natural. He uses the witches to encourage Macbeth’s destructive ambition. By capitulating to his inner most desires, they disclose within Macbeth a thoroughly evil person; however, his glory is short lived. The witches turn his ambition and conceitedness back on him. By simply telling him, what he wants to hear they destroy him. In the final act shortly before his death, he finally admits the truth:
“And be these juggling fiends no more believed
That palter with us in double sense,
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope.”
