Act 1 scene 1 opens with the entrance of the witches; accompanied by thunder and lightning. The setting is an open place. It is clear that the witches control the elements and must therefore be very powerful ‘ When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning or in rain’ the witches speak in rhyming lines with four stressed beats. The rhyme of ‘again’ and ‘rain’ and ‘done’, ‘won’ and ‘sun’ as well as the half rhyme in ‘heath’ and ‘Macbeth’ and the alliteration in the words ‘foul’, ‘fog’ and ‘filthy’ emphasises the unnaturalness of these beings ‘Fair is foul and foul is fair’ this line tells us the anarchy the witches bring to our world. Their purpose in this scene is to create an evil and eerie mood and suggest that they will be the cause of evil doings later on. We also are shown the witches’ physic powers as they know when the battle will end and where they will meet Macbeth. The scene prepares us for real evil at the hands of the witches and also introduces us to one of the themes of this play: appearance versus reality. Shakespeare’s audience would already know that the witches’ aim is to capture human souls and make them evil. The drumbeat rhythm of the scene suggests the battle raging elsewhere but also symbolises the battle for Macbeth’s soul. The witches are the antithesis of God’s divine order so beloved by James 1. James’ treatise ‘Basilicon Doron’ explained the hierarchical structure of society. It was as follows:
God
King
Various social classes
Basilicon Doron states that peace and harmony can only be attained if every level of the hierarchy stays in its natural place. If something unnatural occurs, such as murder of the king, then it was alleged that all society would descend into chaos.
Act 1 scene 3 starts with the witches’ arrival. Once again, thunder heralds their entrance. Initially, the witches discuss their misdeeds ‘Where hast thou been, sister?
Killing swine.’
We discover the witches’ powers are limited as they can make a storm but they cannot kill a sailor. This means they are dependant on human will to work their black arts and so, faced with a virtuous man, they have no power, but faced with a morally flawed character they have the ability to cause chaos. Once again, Shakespeare has four stressed beats in a line with rhyming couplets instead of the iambic pentameter used elsewhere in the play. ‘A drum! a drum!
Macbeth doth come.’
On his entry Macbeth echoes the line the witches spoke: ‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen.’
He seems to recognise them as supernatural beings. Banquo’s question ‘are you ought that man may question?’
refers to the Scottish Act of 1563 which forbade humans from questioning witches as they too would be considered guilty of witchcraft. When Macbeth questions them he too is guilty of this crime. The witches hail him as ‘Thane of Glamis’, ‘Thane of Cawder’ and ‘King hereafter’. Banquo questions Macbeth
‘Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear
Things that sound so fair?’
This alerts the audience to the fact that Macbeth may have entertained the possibility of becoming king. After the witches then vanish into thin air, Banquo wonders aloud whether he and Macbeth have been hallucinating but when news arrives that Macbeth has been made Thane of Cawder he concludes that the witches are ‘Instruments of darkness’ about which he warns Macbeth. Even though Macbeth has entertained the thought of killing King Duncan he decides that ‘If chance will have me king, why, Chance may
Crown me,
Without my stir.’
Act 4 scene 1 begins with thunder again heralding the witches’ entrance. It opens with a stereotypical activity of witches dancing around a cauldron. While this is a common thing for a modern day audience to see, to Shakespeare’s audience this would have been strange. The witches speak again in lines of four stressed beats
‘Round about the cauldron go;
in the poisoned entails throw.’
We see them dancing around a cauldron throwing in strange ingredients to concoct a charm: ‘Liver of blaspheming Jew’ and ‘finger of birth strangled babe’
These ingredients reflect the witches evil nature. The rhyming couplet:
’Double, double, toil and trouble:
Fire, burn and cauldron, bubble.’
is be well-known to a modern audience but to Shakespeare’s audience it would be unfamiliar. Macbeth shares a similarity with the witches. We know this from the lines:
‘By the pricking of my thumbs,
something wicked this way comes.’
We find out that Macbeth no longer fears the witches. At the first meeting he calls them ‘imperfect speakers’ but now he greets them by saying:
‘How now, you secret black and midnight hags!
What is ‘t you do?
He wants to speak to the witches’ masters. The first witch warns that Macbeth can only listen to the apparitions but not question them. The first apparition an armed head says:
‘Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Beware Macduff;
Beware the Thane of Fife. – Dismiss me. – Enough.’
After this the second apparition, a bloody child appears saying:
‘Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!
Be bloody, bold and resolute: laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.’
This furnishes Macbeth with an assurance of security as Scotlands king. Yet this prediction foreshadows a downfall, which the audience is aware of, long before Macbeth is willing to accept its implications. The third apparition, a child with a crown on its head and a branch in its hand says:
’Be lion-mettled, proud and take no care
Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are:
Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.
Macbeth believes that this will never happen because a forest cannot move to Dunsinane Hill. This apparently assures him of his invincibility. Macbeth demands to know whether Banquo’s children will be kings but the witches do not answer instead they conjure a procession of eight kings the, last holding a mirror. They are accompanied by Banquo’s ghost. Through them, the witches show the future of the Scottish and English thrones and confirm Banquo’s prophecy. ‘Thou shalt get kings though
Thou be none.’
James 1 would have been able to trace his ancestory back to Banquo which must mean that his children were kings. The witches appearance in the play finishes when they perform a dance and disappear with Hecate.
Our own attitude to Macbeth lies in the degree to which we feel that it was the witches who caused Macbeth’s downfall. We can see their spiteful intentions but we conclude that they are not active agents of evil: they have no power to induce belief. They basically encourage Macbeth’s boundless ambition and lead him to the way of evil. They are important poetic symbols, manifestations of the ethical ambience of the world of man. Because of this, they are an fundamental element of the play.
