Hecate’s visit leads us to another important role of the witches; they make Macbeth think that he’s invincible, by showing him the second and third apparitions in act 4, scene 1. These are the blood-stained child, and the boy wearing a crown and holding a tree. The blood-stained child tells Macbeth to “be bloody, bold, and resolute… for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth”. Although that sounds like it means he can’t be hurt by anyone, the witches have tricked Macbeth because the apparition’s words only mean that nobody who was given birth to can kill Macbeth, as opposed to people who are born by caesarean, like Macduff. Caesarean sections were rare in those days, both when Macbeth was set and when Shakespeare wrote it, so this would have been a surprising plot twist for the audience. It’s possible that Shakespeare phrased it like he did so that nobody is really sure whether the witches meant to deceive him and make him think he was invincible. This increases the moral ambiguity surrounding the witches predictions and apparitions. After the “bloody child” has gone, a third apparition appears; “a child crowned, with a tree in his hand”. This apparition says “Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until / Great Birnam Wood to High Dunsinane Hill / Shall come against him.” which means that Macbeth won’t be defeated until Birnam Wood moves to attack him at Dunsinane. Macbeth wrongly interprets this as meaning that he’ll never be defeated, because he thinks woods can’t move. This is true, but the witches’ have also phrased this statement eccentrically, possibly deliberately to mislead him, because while a wood can’t move by itself, the boughs can be chopped down and used as camouflage by advancing troops, as happens at the end of the play (Act 5, scene 4: “Let every soldier hew him down a bough / and bear’t before him, thereby shall we shadow / the numbers of our host, and make discovery / err in report of us.”). These visions appear to Macbeth and convince him that he’s invincible, and we can be almost certain it’s done on purpose to ruin him, as indicated in Act 3, scene 5, by Hecate; she says there is a “vap’rous drop on the end of the moon that she will catch, which will create illusions (the apparitions) so that “he shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear / His hopes ’bove wisdom, grace and fear: / and you all know, security / is mortals’ chiefest enemy.”, by which she means that after seeing the illusions she creates, he will be too proud to accept that he might die, and too ambitious to think clearly, which is exactly what happens.
The two final apparitions are designed to make him think he’s invincible and indestructible, while the first apparition, the armoured man, warns him to fear Macduff. This isn’t a suggestion that Macbeth should kill Macbeth, merely a warning, but Macbeth interprets it as such. We cannot know if the witches knew he’d send men to kill Macduff based on this apparition’s words, but we do know that in doing so he creates an enemy who not only wants to avenge Duncan, but his family as well. By killing Macduff’s family, Macbeth ‘makes it personal’, which is shown by Macduff’s distress - he shows his love for his children by giving them pet-names (“What, all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop?”). We can also see that Macduff is terribly upset at because Malcolm says “Let grief convert to anger” and “Let us make med’cines of our great revenge, / to cure this deadly grief.”. Although it wasn’t wise of Macbeth to create an enemy who wants revenge for his family, at this point he is so obsessed with keeping the throne that he will kill on impulse if he thinks that it will get rid of a rival. This point links to Hecate’s speech (Act 3, scene 5, lines 23-33), the phrase “bear his hopes ’bove wisdom”, because this is exactly what Macbeth does in killing Macduff’s family.
Another possible role of the witches is to act as a parallel to Lady Macbeth; both Lady Macbeth and the witches are trusted by Macbeth, and influence his thinking, so it is possible that we (the audience) are meant to see the connection between the witches and Lady Macbeth. If this was Shakespeare’s intention, it could be that he is implying that Lady Macbeth is, in fact, worse than a witches; she interprets the witches’ words in an evil way, she encourages Macbeth to kill and let nothing get in the way of his ambition, and she has a strong influence over him which could be considered witchcraft (although this could also just be manipulation on her part and love on his). She is also definitely trying to influence him, whereas this cannot be said of the witches; they only suggest, if that.
Historical context plays an important part in the understanding of this play. Macbeth was written during the reign of King James I, who was afraid of witchcraft. It is said that he believed that the devil was the force behind the recent Gunpowder Plot, and thought that it was a deliberate attempt by the devil to kill him. At this time, Shakespeare was part of a theatre group called The King’s Men, who were the king’s favoured performers, so it was important that they played up to the King’s paranoia by having witches influence the man who killed the king of Scotland. This is also important because King James was also James VI of Scotland. Presumably, the play ends like it does (with the eponymous ‘hero’ having his head stuck on a pike) to please the King. It is notable at this point to mention that before 1606, the image of witches was different; Shakespeare created a stereotypical view of witches that we still follow today. Witches in Shakespearian plays are usually disfigured or ugly old women, have robes, brew potions, and dance around chanting.
At the time in which Macbeth was set, there was no clear definition of witches - although the ‘witches’ don’t call themselves witches, they call themselves ‘The Weird Sisters’. According to the dictionary, the word ‘weird’ can mean three things: strange or unusual, belonging to or suggesting the supernatural, or relating to or influenced by fate. In spite of this, the first scene exaggerates the fact that they may be witches, as they are in an isolated location, in bad weather (and they later refer to the fact that they can choose the weather, so they must prefer bad weather). The isolated location can be connected to another name for witches: ‘hedge-riders’, meaning they are on the border between the human world and the supernatural world, hence the fact that they meet in nearly human form in a place that is on this Earth, rather than somewhere else.
In the first scene, the witches very effectively set up the main themes of the play; magic is shown by the witches, evil is hinted at by both the witches’ presence and the phrase “fair is foul and foul is fair”, and they also say “there to meet with Macbeth”, although they say nothing about murder. A Jacobean audience would have been biased against the witches and anyone they influenced or associated with because of King James’ persecution of witches.
In conclusion, the witches are the ones who cause Macbeth to think he may be king one day, which is then encouraged by Lady Macbeth. They then, having set up his rise to power, prepare his fall by showing him selective and ambiguous visions of their ‘masters’. They also serve as a way to frighten the audience, introduce the themes of trickery, witchcraft, and evil, and something to endear Shakespeare and his players to King James.
