Witches

• "Double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble"


  -entrancing and hypnotic repetition, making use a of a rhyming couplet and trochaic tetrameter. The meter opposes the natural speech rythm, and adds a hypnotic chant to the incantation, it represents in its unnaturalness the reversal of everything natural, and foreshadows this reversal in the great chain of being through regicide.

  -the witches are presented as the archetype of the supernatural with their malevolent powers. They are intentionally forcing deceitful and unclear spells to further toy with and deceive macbeth as he is blinded by his hubris, unable to see past their deceit with their promises of kingship.

  -fire creates an image of irreversible damage, foreshadows macbeths downfall through the triumph of the witches prophecies.
• "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes"


  -the witches predict macbeths arrival before the audience has any knowing of his becoming, sensing the evil and corruption of macbeth reinforces their supernatural connections to fate, and reinforces the darkness of their omniscience, they know macbeth is coming, perhaps reinforcing his fate has been decided

  -with macbeths fate decided, and being judged by even the supernatural as "wicked", shows macbeths downfall is solidified and complete, he has fallen for their deceit, the murder of duncan has occured. shows how the supernatural corrupt and destroy original forces of good by praying on human weaknesses, his ambition was picked a part and toyed with by the witches.

  -a deeply superstitious society would have resonated deeply with this supernatural change, fearing deeply its consequence on macbeth, this line in particular stand out, in Iambic Pentameter
• “By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes” (Act 4, Scene 1)


  in iambic pentamater, which makes it stand out from the rest of the witches incantations predominantly in trochaic tetrameter, it sets it a part as rather a prophecy than chanting a spell, the shift in meter reinforces the idea of the supernatural aligning his fate.
• "fair is foul and foul is fair"

  -within the first few minutes of the play, macbeth is aligned with themes of unnatural reversal and supernatural incantations. The contradictions portray the complete moral distortion that the witches seek to entice.

  -it introduces the dark presence of witchcraft very early on in the play

  -witches were feared as agents of chaos, in king James I treatise on daemonologie, the engrained societal paranoia of witchcraft as a deceitful enemies to man, this wouldve deeply resonated with a superstitious jacobean audience, the paradox in their spell foreshadowing the later central conflict of morality.
• JAMES I

  james I was deeply superstitious, especially towards witchcraft. Having taken part in many witch trials himself, and writing his own treatise on daemonologie about witches, portraying them as agents of chaos sent by satan. Through connecting witches to the regicide of Duncan and downfall of an archetypal jacobean male we see in act 1 scene 2 (macbeth) , he demonstrates his own support and dislike of witchcraft, evidencing his allegiance to james I and gaining his favour through shared hatred,