The witches and the supernatural

The play opens with three witches, the ‘Weird Sisters’. Banquo describes them as ‘So withered, and so wild in their attire’ (Act 1 Scene 3), with beards, so they look neither fully human nor fully female.

Their first scene ends with a paradox: ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ (Act 1 Scene 1). Good and evil are mixed up, and nothing is what it seems. That idea runs through the whole play.

They speak in short, rhyming chants, with a different rhythm from everyone else, such as ‘Double, double toil and trouble’ (Act 4 Scene 1). This makes them sound strange and like spells.

The witches' prophecies are riddles. They tell Banquo he is ‘Lesser than Macbeth and greater’ and that he will ‘get kings, though thou be none’ (Act 1 Scene 3).

Macbeth's very first line echoes them without his knowing it: ‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen’ (Act 1 Scene 3). This suggests a link between Macbeth and the witches before they even speak.

The prophecies are true, but only half the truth. They tell Macbeth what he wants to hear, and leave out the cost.

Before the murder, Macbeth sees a floating dagger: ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?’ (Act 2 Scene 1). He wonders if it is ‘A dagger of the mind’ (Act 2 Scene 1), a hallucination caused by his fevered brain.

At the banquet, Banquo's ghost appears. Only Macbeth sees it, and he cries, ‘Never shake / Thy gory locks at me’ (Act 3 Scene 4). Lady Macbeth dismisses it as ‘the very painting of your fear’ (Act 3 Scene 4).

Shakespeare leaves it open whether these are real or the products of Macbeth's guilty mind.

In Act 4 Scene 1 Macbeth goes to the witches, who show him three apparitions. The first warns him to ‘Beware Macduff’. The second promises that ‘none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth’ (Act 4 Scene 1). The third says he will not be beaten until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane.

The second and third seem impossible, so Macbeth feels safe. But both have hidden meanings: Macduff was born by being cut from his mother, and Malcolm's soldiers carry branches from Birnam Wood.

The apparitions use equivocation: words that can mean two things. They make Macbeth overconfident, and lead him to his death.

The witches never tell Macbeth to kill anyone. They only predict. So who is to blame?

• The witches: Banquo calls them ‘instruments of darkness’ (Act 1 Scene 3), and their words start everything.
• Macbeth: he thinks of murder himself, straight away, and chooses it.
• Lady Macbeth: she pushes him when he hesitates.

Banquo hears prophecies too, but does not kill. That suggests the witches only bring out what is already inside a person. In 1606, though, many people believed witches had real power, and King James had written a book about them.