The Witches
The three Witches (or 'Weird Sisters') open the play and set its tone of moral inversion: 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair.' They prophecy Macbeth's rise but never explicitly command him to act — their power lies in suggestion, not compulsion. For a Jacobean audience familiar with James I's *Daemonologie* (1597), they would have been genuinely terrifying agents of the devil. Shakespeare uses them to raise the play's central question: does fate control Macbeth, or does he choose his own destruction?
Key Themes
The Witches are the play's primary embodiment of supernatural evil, operating outside natural and divine law to tempt mortals toward damnation.
Their prophecies raise the central question of whether Macbeth's future is predetermined or whether they merely reveal possibilities that he chooses to act on.
Their motto 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair' establishes the play's world of inverted values, where nothing can be trusted and every truth conceals a deception.
They do not create Macbeth's ambition but ignite it through suggestion — their prophecies act as a catalyst that transforms latent desire into murderous action.
They are agents of moral corruption who work by equivocation, using half-truths to lead Macbeth into a false sense of security that accelerates his moral disintegration.
Character Arc
Appear in thunder and lightning, establishing the play's atmosphere of moral chaos. Their chant — 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair' — introduces the theme of inverted values that pervades the entire tragedy.
Greet Macbeth with three titles: Thane of Glamis (present), Thane of Cawdor (imminent), and 'king hereafter' (future). They also tell Banquo he will be 'lesser than Macbeth, and greater.' The prophecies are ambiguous, equivocal — designed to tempt, not to instruct.
Macbeth seeks them out voluntarily. They show three apparitions delivering riddling prophecies: 'none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth' and 'Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until / Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill / Shall come.' These equivocations give false confidence that leads to his downfall.
Key Quotes
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.”
Act 1, Scene 1
This chiasmus inverts moral categories — good is evil, evil is good. It establishes the play's central theme that appearances deceive and natural order has been corrupted. Macbeth unconsciously echoes this ('So foul and fair a day'), suggesting he is already aligned with the Witches' worldview.
Theme Links
The chiasmus collapses the distinction between good and evil at the play's very opening, establishing a world where no surface can be trusted and all moral categories are inverted.
The chant functions as an incantation that corrupts the natural moral order, marking the Witches as agents of chaos who operate outside the divine framework of good and evil.
By declaring foulness fair, the Witches articulate the moral inversion that will infect Macbeth and, through him, all of Scotland — evil disguised as good becomes the play's governing principle.
“All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!”
Act 1, Scene 3
The prophecy is a greeting, not a command — 'hail' not 'go and kill Duncan.' This ambiguity is crucial: Shakespeare ensures Macbeth's downfall comes from his own interpretation of the prophecy, not from supernatural compulsion, preserving his moral agency and culpability.
Theme Links
The prophecy predicts but does not prescribe — 'shalt be' states a future but does not instruct Macbeth how to reach it, leaving the moral choice entirely in his hands.
The prophecy ignites Macbeth's ambition by making the crown seem attainable; his 'horrible imaginings' immediately after prove the desire for power was already present, waiting for a spark.
The Witches' foreknowledge raises the question of whether they see a fixed future or create one — their supernatural insight is the mechanism through which temptation operates.
“Double, double toil and trouble; / Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”
Act 4, Scene 1
The incantatory trochaic tetrameter (stressed-unstressed rhythm) inverts the play's usual iambic pentameter, creating a sense of supernatural disorder. The 'double' motif connects to the play's theme of duplicity and the equivocation of their prophecies.
Theme Links
The ritual incantation with its inverted rhythm and grotesque ingredients creates the play's most concentrated scene of occult power, marking the cauldron as a source of demonic knowledge.
The word 'double' encapsulates the Witches' method of equivocation — everything they say has a double meaning, and the prophecies that emerge from this scene will deceive Macbeth through their apparent clarity.
Macbeth now seeks the Witches voluntarily, inverting the Act 1 encounter; his free choice to pursue supernatural knowledge deepens his entrapment in a fate he is actively constructing.
Key Relationships
They provide the spark but not the fuel — Macbeth's ambition is his own. In Act 1 he is disturbed by the prophecy; by Act 4 he seeks them out willingly. Shakespeare shows that evil works by exploiting existing weaknesses, not by creating them.
Banquo receives a prophecy too ('thou shalt get kings') but does not act on it, proving that the supernatural does not compel action. His restraint exposes Macbeth's choice to succumb.
Both the Witches and Lady Macbeth are female figures associated with transgression and the subversion of natural order. Lady Macbeth's 'unsex me' speech echoes the Witches' gender ambiguity (Banquo notes they have beards), linking all the play's powerful women to the disruption of patriarchal norms.
Writer’s Methods
Shakespeare uses the Witches to create dramatic ambiguity: the audience can never be sure if they cause Macbeth's actions or merely predict them. Their rhyming couplets and trochaic metre set them apart from the iambic pentameter of the court, marking them as agents of disorder. The equivocation of their prophecies (saying one thing while meaning another) reflected a topical concern — the Gunpowder Plotters had been trained in equivocation by Jesuits, and the word carried dangerous political overtones in 1606.
Grade 7+ Point
WOWNew Historicist readings connect the Witches to James I's obsession with witchcraft — he personally interrogated suspected witches and wrote *Daemonologie*. Shakespeare's play can be seen as both flattering the king's interests *and* subtly questioning them: if the Witches' prophecies come true regardless, does prosecuting witches achieve anything? The play's refusal to clarify the Witches' power is itself a form of dramatic equivocation.
Key Vocabulary
Deliberately ambiguous language that misleads without technically lying
A rhetorical pattern where ideas are reversed: 'fair is foul, foul is fair'
A stressed-unstressed rhythm — the opposite of the play's normal iambic metre
Forces beyond the natural world — associated with evil in the Jacobean worldview
The belief that events are predetermined and humans have no free will
Exam Tip
AOAvoid saying the Witches 'made' Macbeth do anything — this removes his moral responsibility and weakens your argument. Instead, argue they reveal or exploit his pre-existing ambition, and link this to Shakespeare's Jacobean context where free will vs predestination was a live theological debate.