The word foreshadowing means the prediction of what is going to happen. Foreshadowing plays an important role in Macbeth because most of the action of the play is hinted at before it happens. The three witches have a heavy hand in the foreshadowing.
Shakespeare ends on a rhyming couplet. “Fair is foul and foul is fair” This is a contradiction to show that Macbeth is about to do an evil deed. This line shows that witches are neutral in nature as they are not affected by any side winning or losing in the battle. For the witches right is the same as wrong and wrong is same as right. This also means things aren’t what they seem.
At the beginning of the first act, the witches rely on supernatural powers to help themselves. In the third scene of that act, they are casting an evil spell on a sailor whose wife has wronged them. They speak in rhymes and use magic words such as, “Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, /and thrice again, to make up nine." Also, the witches where casting a spell to see Macbeth's future. During the casting of the spell, the witches are described of witchery, such as a cauldron.
This is another line where the writer uses rhythm. “Hover through the fog and filthy air”. This line rhymes effectively and flows fluently.
Macbeth is a Scottish general who is loyal to Duncan, the Scottish king. But after Macbeth meets three witches who prophesy that Macbeth will be king, the general is no longer satisfied to remain loyal to his king. The sort of play that the reader expects when the three witches are introduced is that the play is going to be about evil and witchcraft such as people being cursed. The scene tells me that when the battle is lost or won, the three witches are going to carry on with their evilness.
Act 1, Scene 3
The second witch killed a pig which showed that they were animals by killing live stock. “Killing swine”. The audience would expect this that they were accused of killing live stock.
The witches was casting and practising a spell. “But in a sieve I’ll thither sail, and, like a rat without a tail, I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do”. This was thought to be common practice for the witches.
The witch’s uses body parts in spells. “Pilots thumb”. This shows how gruesome the witches are and how it creates a mood on the audience that the witches are evil and not good.
Macbeth uses the same words that the witches use. “So foul and fair a day I have not seen”. He is referring to the battle that he has recently fought. It is fair because he has won; it is foul because he has lost Captain Banquo. The foulness referred to the gore blood and deaths of the fighting. The fairness referred to the victory of the battle. It's basically a paradox; a paradox is a contradiction in terms. Fair and foul a day is saying that it’s a good day, but a bad day. So like, it’s wet and windy, but also warms a sunny. And saying he has not seen it is saying that he hasn't seen anything like this.
The witches are promising he will become the thane of Cawdor. All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!/ All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!/ All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King herafter". The witch’s prediction is that Macbeth will become the thane of Cawdor. At this point he is the thane of Glamis meaning he is the lord of a place called Glamis. When the witches say “all hail to thee thane of Cawdor”, they are predicting that Macbeth will be the thane of cawdor. “Shalt be King Here after”. The witches predict Macbeth will become King. Macbeth is surprised by this news and gets clarification from the sisters. The sisters disappear before responding.
The witches re-enter.
Third Witch: Hail!
First Witch: Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.
Second Witch: Not so happy, yet much happier.
Third Witch: Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none:
So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!
The words "Lesser" and "greater", and "Not so happy" and "happier" are total contrast to each other. The witches use supernatural powers to prophesize the hidden meaning. This also means the witches are predicting that his sons will become kings and he will become king himself.
Act 1, Scene 5
As the scene opens, Lady Macbeth is reading a letter from her husband. The letter tells of the witches' prophecy for him, because "I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge"
"The perfectest report" means "the most reliable information," so it means that Macbeth has been asking people what they know about the witches. This means he has ignored the advice of Banquo, who is sure that witches can't be trusted. But Macbeth seems to trust the witches for sure, because he is writing to his wife, his "dearest partner of greatness," so that she "mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing"
He believes that she has a right to rejoice. However, Lady Macbeth doesn't rejoice. She is determined that he will be king, but she suspects that he doesn't have the right stuff to do what needs to be done. She says: "Yet do i fear thy nature:/ It is too full o' the milk of human kindness / to catch the nearest way"
Her reaction to the letter shows that Lady Macbeth is a woman who knows her husband very well, maybe because she shares some of his instincts. For both of them, murder is the closest and easiest way. In an earlier scene, Macbeth had commented that "If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, / Without my stir" but later he assumes that he must be a killer to be king. And this was always what his wife thought.
Lady Macbeth seems to share the witches' views on good and bad. She says to her husband, "Thou wouldst be great; / Art not without ambition, but without / The ilness should attend it”. She, like the witches, believes that foul is fair. Sucess "should" be accompanied by "illness." Yet she does not believe that Macbeth is really good. She says that he "wouldst not play false, / And yet wouldst wrongly win". In her view, he's something of a coward, because he has that within him that tells him what he must do if he is to have the throne, but he's afraid to do it. She tells her husband that he should hurry home so that she can "chastise with the valour of my tongue / All that impedes thee from the golden round". In other words, she plans to nag him until he's ashamed of himself for being afraid to be bad. After all, it's only that fear is stopping him wearing the crown.
Shakespeare writes this sentence in the play “looks like the innocent flower, but be the serpant under’t. He thats coming must be provided for:and you shall put this nights great business into my dispatch”. This sentence shows that lady Macbeth wants her husband to look innocent like the flower but be the bloody man, serpent, under it.
As she waits for her husband, Lady Macbeth starts to think like a killer does. She says, "Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty!” In Shakespeare's time women were thought to be naturally more kind and gentle than men. But, Lady Macbeth, who is thinking deadly about thoughts, calls on the "spirits". We would say that those "spirits" are that part of her that can kill and not care; nowadays we might show such a person talking to herself, saying "you can do it." But can she? For a person who wants to be cold-hearted, she seems to be talking quite a lot. She wants her blood to be thick and her milk to be bitter poison, but at the end she as her husband did earlier asks for the ability to kill without seeing what she is doing, and without being seen.
Act 1, Scene 7
Macbeth almost talks himself out of killing the King. Lady Macbeth gives her husband a tongue-lashing that makes him commit to their plan to murder the King.
Act 4, Scene 1
Shakespeare uses the witches that both Macbeth and nature are troubled. Shakespeare writes “Pour in sow’s blood, which hath eaten her nine farrows” This sentence shows that nature is troubled because a sow, pig, has eaten nine farrows, pigs, which shows a very negative image of horror coming to haunt Macbeth.
Shakespeare shows the witches reassuring Macbeth, and the audience, Shakespeare writes “Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth”
This Exhibits that Macbeth is invincible and know one shall interfere with his plan.
However the other prophesy in which the witches reassure Macbeth, and the audience with is “Macbeth shall never be vanquish’d be until great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him”.
This makes Macbeth feel rather safe that nobody will take the throne of him, on the other hand vanquished until Birnam wood travel to Dunsinane hill.
The entrance of Macbeth in Act 1 Scene 4 of the Shakespearean play was dramatically ironic. In Scene 3, he had received the witches' predictions of noble and royal career moves in his future. He also had received the news of his receipt of the powerful title and profitable properties of the disgraced Thane of Cawdor. So in Scene 4 Macbeth brought royal expectations to a meeting of King Duncan I and the leading noblemen of Scotland. Ironically, those expectations quickly were dashed.
Conclusion
Macbeth believes that the prophecies will still protect him until the very last moment, but he then realises they are being fulfilled. He us killed by Macduff who was not born naturally. Three evil withes foretell that Macbeth will become Thane of DCawdor and even King of Scotland. Macbeth dismissed their prophecies, but after he is promoted to Thane of Cawdor for military action, Macbeth wonders if he shall not be King, too. The witches and his wife are both evil influences on him in the first part of the play. In the last acts, however, he is in control, but he exercises this power badly. Ambition. The witches are important in the play because they predict Macbeth’s future. He opens up his path in life to include others as well, namely the withes and his wife. After that event, the true Macbeth is gone, another traveller on the road of evil. I think that both the witches and Macbeths wife are evil but at the end he is in control but he takes it to the wrong path.
