Soon after, we see Lady Macbeth intentionally calling on the dark forces to help her feel no remorse, guilt or fear in the coming days. She calls to the evil forces and says, ‘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 does this because she knows that she will need to be very strong and in control if she is to push Macbeth into committing the murder. She knows that if she wishes to succeed, she will have to show absolutely no signs of weakness or of a guilty mind. She completely tries to eradicate any feelings of guilt she might feel by asking to be filled with the direst cruelty.
Some people say that without Lady Macbeth’s intervention, Macbeth wouldn’t have gone through with the murder. They say this because Macbeth does decide not to go through with the murder in act1 scene7, after he has considered all the reasons why he should and shouldn’t murder Duncan. He tells her that ‘we will proceed no further in this business’. Some people believe that at this point, if Lady Macbeth had not responded with such force, Macbeth wouldn’t have murdered Duncan. This is because Lady Macbeth is very close to Macbeth at the start of the play. There is a trust between them, and Macbeth is going to respect what his wife says. This makes it hard for Macbeth to continue saying that he won’t murder Duncan, if his wife feels so strongly on the subject. Others believe that his ambition was too strong for him to have ignored it, and feel that he would have eventually murdered Duncan, even if Lady Macbeth had not intervened.
Personally, I hold the witches or weïrd sisters responsible for the murder of Duncan. This is for a number of reasons. Firstly, the very first scene in the play opens with the weïrd sisters. It is clear from this first scene that the play is going to be about the struggle between the forces of good and evil. They also make it quite clear that Macbeth is going to be their target for the forces of evil. They have plotted the time and place for meeting with Macbeth, and obviously have an intention for doing so.
When the witches meet with Macbeth, they give him and Banquo predictions. They say to Macbeth, ‘All hail Macbeth, hail to three, Thane of Glamis.
All hail Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor.
All hail Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter.’
They say to Banquo, ‘Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.’
Macbeth and Banquo don’t take the witches too seriously at first, although Macbeth is enthralled by what they say to him. This is because they strike a chord in Macbeth’s mind. What they say about him becoming king in one of his secret ambitions. They both take the predictions with a pinch of salt as such, because although Macbeth was the Thane of Glamis, he was not Thane of Cawdor, and being king didn’t seem likely. When Macbeth is later informed of his being made the Thane of Cawdor, he starts to wonder about the predictions.
The witches speak in riddles. At first, Macbeth didn’t understand what the witches were saying because it all seemed so unrealistic. However, when Macbeth starts taking the predictions more seriously and tries interpreting them, he can in effect interpret what he wants to hear because the predictions aren’t completely clear. There are no explanations as to how he is going to become king, or why Banquo’s sons will be kings and not his sons. Macbeth decides to leave what may happen to chance, and not to interfere himself.
I believe that this was done deliberately by the witches to confuse Macbeth, and to put the thoughts of murder into his mind…just as an option to begin with. Later on, Macbeth learns that Duncan’s eldest son, Malcolm is to succeed him as king. Macbeth has only recently decided to leave becoming king to the prophecies, and to chance. Now that Duncan has an heir, Macbeth doesn’t see that he has any chance of becoming king with out his own intervention. This puts the thought of murder firmly back into his mind, as more than just an option.
If the witches hadn’t on purposely met with Macbeth to give him these vague predictions, he might have never discovered the extent of his ambitions. He would certainly not have had the encouragement of the prophecies to go along with what he was doing. The thought of murdering Duncan and becoming king would probably never have occurred to him. If Lady Macbeth hadn’t have intervened, Macbeth might very well have still murdered Duncan, however, without the witches interventions, the idea wouldn’t have even come to Macbeth. We also could start seeing the witches’ power as ‘the force of evil’ in the world. If this is the case, when Lady Macbeth called upon the forces of evil to be ‘unsexed’ and to be filled with the ‘direst cruelty’, surely she is calling upon the same power that is the witches, and therefore the witches could be held responsible for any of the time Lady Macbeth spent trying to persuade Macbeth to kill Duncan.
Aside from just putting the ideas into Macbeth’s head, we don’t actually know how much real control they have over him. We know that they can either see into the future, or plan it themselves because they make the predictions to Macbeth. Also, in the first scene, they use the phrase, ‘When the battle’s lost, and won’, which is repeated by Duncan in the following scene. They also use the phrase, ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’, which is not only echoed by Macbeth in scene 3, ‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen’, but it is also a reflection of the confusions of good and evil throughout the play. If they are capable of such powers, have they planned Macbeth’s destiny? Is he following a path that they have already ordained? If so then they are directly responsible for Duncan’s death, but if not, they must still be partially responsible. They are certainly trying to lead Macbeth to destruction, and it was probably their plan before they revealed the predictions to Macbeth that he should murder Duncan.
We know that they enjoy destroying people’s lives, and creating evil wherever possible from the beginning of scene three, where the witches talk about the various evil deeds they have been doing. The witches speak of how they plan to call a wind to toss and smash a sailors boat, because they are too weak to actually sink it. They talk of how they will cause the sailor to have no sleep. This resembles what they plan to do to Macbeth. It suggests that the witches aren’t strong enough to alter fate, but they create the right conditions for evil. They try to provoke certain conditions so that evil will find it easier to happen. It suggests that they provoke it, but man commits the evil, they do not actually force it to happen.
It is similar with Macbeth. The witches speak small truths to him, enough to arouse his ambitions and curiosity, but just few enough for Macbeth to form whatever conclusion he wanted from them. The witches might have told him certain truths that would have steered him towards the thought of murdering Duncan, but they never actually said it outright. They did not have to mention about Banquo’s children becoming kings. I think that they did this in order to steer Macbeth towards other evil deeds in the future, and help to lead him to destruction. In Elizabethan society at the time when William Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, many people believed in witchcraft, and its evil ways. A prediction like this from some obviously magical beings would have to be considered.
Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have reasons for wanting Macbeth to become king - ambition. The witches want to cause havoc and evil. Their plan to destroy Macbeth involved him killing Duncan. This was obvious. If they didn’t intentionally cause Duncan’s death, why did they so obviously steer Macbeth to that direction? Throughout, they seem to be the evil force behind everything. Without them, the evil in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth might have stayed hidden, and certainly remained unused.
