This is the 3rd and final in a series of the supernatural, as one of the themes, in the play Macbeth.
To read the first and second in this series then click on the links below.
To fully understand this article, you will need to have read the preceding two articles. However to provide a brief summary of the previous two articles, we looked at some of these points:
King James I and his interest and firm opposition to witchcraft.
The evil nature of witches as believed by English people at that time and in the play.
Macbeth’s interactions with the witches.
Lady Macbeth invoking evil spirits to remove any morality or compassion from her in order that she will be ruthless in getting the throne for Macbeth.
The ghost of Banquo.
In this article we will look at how Macbeth meets the witches again.
Act 3, scene 5
Prior to Macbeth meeting the witches for the second and final time, and after the scene where he sees the ghost of Banquo, in Act 3, scene 5, we see Hecate and the three witches.
Who is Hecate?
Hecate was the ancient Greek goddess of witchcraft and is thus the supreme leader of all witches. She is shown in Macbeth angry with the three witches for delivering prophesies to Macbeth without her prior knowledge or consent.
The first witch says right at the start of the scene.
‘Why, how now, Hecate! You look angerly.’
To which Hecate replies:
‘Have I not reason, beldams as you are?
‘Saucy and overbold, how did you dare
To trade and traffic with Macbeth
In riddles and affairs of death,
And I, the mistress of your charms,
The close contriver of all harms,
Was never called to bear my part,
Or show the glory of our art?’
The irony of this is even the relationship the witches have with their mistress and ‘boss’, Hecate is a horrible one characterised by contempt, with Hecate calling them ‘beldams’, a word which means an old woman, a hag or an ugly old woman.
A ‘hag’.
However Hecate, an incarnation of evil, ironically views Macbeth as being far from good. She says to the witches that their telling Macbeth prophesies without her permission is not good even more so due to Macbeth’s very flawed personality.
‘And, which is worse, all you have done
Hath been but for a wayward son,
Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do,
Loves for his own ends, not for you.’
She describes Macbeth as ‘spiteful’ and ‘wrathful’ and that he is greedy and concerned about his ‘own ends’. In other words he is selfish. When even a very epitome of evil such as Hecate condemns someone that is troubling. The audience know that Macbeth is no angel. The witches may have given him information but they never told him to murder. Macbeth is far from being a victim but has a lot of bad inside him.
Hecate then speaks of how she has a busy night ahead of her and she must do a lot of work, ‘great business’ before noon.
‘This night I’ll spend
Unto a dismal and a fatal end.
Great business must be wrought ere noon.’
Then she says that from a droplet of the moon she will create ‘artificial sprites’, i.e. spirits that:
‘As by the strength of their illusionShall draw him on to his confusion.’
It is important to stop here and focus on the word ‘confusion’.
The witches if they do give knowledge or information, do not give such whose nature is that it enlightens, benefits or provides guidance. Their knowledge is given in a cryptic, unclear form and causes ‘confusion’ with the word itself being mentioned here by Hecate herself, the leader of all witches.
What James I and others strongly opposed to witchcraft would say from this, is that the play proves no true, beneficial knowledge emanates from the witches. None of the sort that helps humanity to progress. Not the knowledge that great scientists provide mankind. Rather than light or rays of sunshine in the form of knowledge coming from witches, there is murky, fogginess in terms of unclear prophecies and darkness in the form of destruction and bloodshed. Hecate then says of Macbeth:
‘He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear.
And you all know, security
Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.‘
She knows that the prophesies which the witches give him shall lull him in to a false sense of security and make him ‘scorn death’. Hecate’s plans for Macbeth are not good. They do not involve warning him and saving him, but telling him things that will end in his destruction. She is no friend of Macbeth but an ‘enemy’. By extension witches are no friends of humans, including those who in the era of James I, may wish to approach them for prophesies and knowledge.
Act 4, scene 1
A few scenes later, we see Macbeth and the witches with the three witches speaking at first.
They are around a cauldron cooking a potion which consists of a lot of animal parts. Indeed in the initial part of this scene we see reference to ‘cat’, ‘hedge-pig’ (hedgehog), ‘toad’, ‘snake’, ‘frog’, ‘new’, ‘bat’, ‘dog’, ‘adder’, ‘blind-worm’, ‘lizard’ and ‘owlet’ (owl). This reflects the belief at that time that animals or parts of their bodies were used in witchcraft including the making of potions.
The second witch says:
‘Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake.
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.’
Then in unison the three witches chant:
‘Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.‘
This rhyming couplet has a very ominous and dark feel to it with the words ‘trouble’ and ‘fire’.
We can see Shakespeare’s use of alliteration in the use of similar consonant sounds, the ‘bl’ of ‘double’, ‘trouble’ and ‘bubble’. This work to give it an almost musical effect rendering it’s impact greater on the audience.
Macbeth then enters and similar to the contempt that Hecate herself has for these witches he addresses them in a derisory tone.
‘How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags?
What is ’t you do?‘
The witches and their dark arts and black magic are all secret, all things associated with darkness and the night.
Macbeth says later:
‘I conjure you by that which you profess—
Howe’er you come to know it—answer me.
Though you untie the winds and let them fight
Against the churches, though the yeasty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up….
Even till destruction sicken, answer me
To what I ask you.‘
He is acknowledging that they know the future but does not know how. What is also worth noting here is again the reference to wind. The motif of wind is mentioned again here, as it has been mentioned before in the play, for example when the first witch refers to casting winds against the sailor going to Aleppo. This links to James I and his belief that his wife Anne was unable to sail to Scotland from Denmark due to storms and winds which were actually caused by witches. In these lines Macbeth’s words ‘swallow navigation up’ is a reference to sailors drowning and ships being destroyed.
Macbeth asks the witches to show him the future.
They do that in the form of three apparitions coming from the cauldron. The first is a floating head which says:
‘Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Beware Macduff.
Beware the thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough.’
This prophecy is not overly cryptic or confusing. No oxymorons. Macbeth would know that Macduff is someone he should be worried about.
In fact Macbeth himself is quite appreciative of the apparition’s seemingly benevolent act of warning him and he says:
‘Whate’er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks.
Thou hast harped my fear aright. But one word more—’
However the apparition has already turned and the witches tell him the second apparition will speak now. The second apparition, a bloody child, emerges and says:
‘Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.‘
This is reminiscent of Lady Macbeth’s chiding of her husband to be committed to killing Duncan and not be indecisive and also challenging his manhood.
Macbeth’s reaction to this is that this means he has no need to be scared of Macbeth, a type of virtual cancellation of the previous prophesy. Here again we see a metaphorical ‘toing and froing’ or ‘zig-zagging’ caused by the witches prophecies, that metaphorical tree constantly swaying from side to side as mentioned in the previous article.
‘Fear Macduff’ – ‘Don’t fear Macduff’ – Fear Macduff’ – ‘Don’t fear Macduff’.
Macbeth may well have gone home and been confused – as was Hecate and the witches intent. On the one hand he should be fearful of Macduff but on the other hand ‘none of woman born shall harm Macbeth‘.
The confusion which Hecate herself spoke of Macbeth having is clear in Macbeth’s words upon hearing the second apparition.
‘Then live, Macduff. What need I fear of thee?
But yet I’ll make assurance double sure,
And take a bond of fate. Thou shalt not live,
So Macbeth says ‘Then live, Macduff’ and a few seconds later ‘Thou shalt not live’. If he were to be issuing orders to someone about Macduff, it would be ‘don’t kill him’ and then ‘kill him’. Macbeth is clearly not firm or consistent in his thinking. He is confused.
Macbeth then sees the third apparition, a child with a crown holding a tree, who tells him
‘Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him.‘
Macbeth thus concludes that this is impossible and that he will not be killed but live his life until he dies a normal or ‘natural’ death. His reaction to the third apparition’s prophecy includes the words:
‘Sweet bodements! Good!’
These prophesies are far from ‘sweet’ but are poisonous. They lead to Macbeth ordering the murder of Macduff’s wife and children.
However what this scene does highlight is the evil inside Macbeth. For the second apparition makes him believe that Macduff is no threat to him but despite that and due to his insecurity he ends up killing his family. Macbeth cannot be said to be a good man, for Macduff’s wife and children would not be able to harm him. Hecate herself as we saw earlier on speaks negatively of Macbeth who is ‘spiteful’ and ‘wrathful’ and greedy according to her.
However this latent evil which resided within Macbeth would not have been activated if it were not for the witches prophecies, for it is their prophecies which cause him to kill first Duncan and then Macduff’s family.
Towards the end of this scene we witness Macbeth seeing a line of eight kings with the last one holding a mirror (or ‘glass’ in the original stage directions), these kings were a reference to the kings of the Stuart dynasty with the eighth one actually being James I. This is yet again another example of Shakespeare trying to please or compliment James I. In fact the whole play could arguably be seen from a certain perspective as a giant compliment and supplement to James I book on witchcraft ‘Daemonologie’. Banquo himself is believed to have been the ancestor of king James I.
We see later on in the play how the prophesies are shown to be true, with Macduff killing Macbeth and how he was not ‘of woman born’ but born of a Caesarian section.
Conclusion
The supernatural is central to the story of Macbeth. Without the witches and their prophesies there is no play. If the witches had not told Macbeth that he would be king, he would not have murdered Duncan. If they had not told him of Macduff, he would not have sought to murder Macduff, but only being able to murder his wife and children.
If the witches had not been there, Macbeth would likely have remained a loyal subject of Duncan. He was in fact praised his loyalty to the king and on that account was given the title ‘Thane of Cawdor’. However therein lies the irony and paradox. As the witches themselves said ‘fair is foul, and foul is fair‘ (good is evil and evil is good). If Macbeth’s deep loyalty had not happened he may have never become Thane of Cawdor and thus never ending up killing Duncan which he only did after hearing of his new title of Thane of Cawdor almost ‘miraculously’ and instantly after his first meeting with the witches. Macbeth may have seemed ‘fair’ (good) to the king but as we see later he (Macbeth) is very ‘foul’.
Macbeth is both good and bad. He possesses both inside him. We see it in his loyalty to the king and his bravery. We even see it towards the end when he thanks the first apparition for telling him to beware of Macduff, those words of appreciation reflecting gratitude and thankfulness.
It is also very important for the student of Macbeth to be aware of how much this play was a gift to Shakespeare’s patron, the new king of England, James I for whom witchcraft was a very important subject and who was actually a king of England as Macbeth and Duncan were in both the play and in actual life. Macbeth and Duncan were both kings of Scotland in the 11th century. The play centres around the malevolent nature of witchcraft and how it can destroy people’s lives, a message which James I would totally have wanted to be emphasised at that time.
