act 4 scene 1

• 'tell me', 'call em' (Macbeth Act 4)

  Macbeth's hubris is explicit as when he enter, he speaks with imperative phrases. Fuelled by insatiable greed and an unbridled hunger for power, this marks Macbeth's intentional engagement with the witches for the first time. The imperativeness of the command 'tell' coupled with the personal pronoun 'me', implies Macbeth's authoritative demand for respect and obedience, extending even to the supernatural realm. His title of King inflates his sense of self-importance. with his hubris makes him believe he can even supersede the power of the supernatural
• 'eye of newt', 'fire burn and cauldron bubble', 'hell-broth' (Witches Act 4)


  the words 'fire burn', 'hell-broth', and 'bubble' craft a semantic field of hell which strengthens the idea that the witches' supernatural abilities are intrinsically linked to malevolence - they are agents of the devil. Moreover, the elements contained in their potion adhere to the archetypal portrayal of witches outlined in King James I's 'Daemonologie'. This conformity taps into the audience's pre-existing apprehensions and anticipations related to witchcraft prevalent during the Jacobean era
• 'time, thou anticipatest my dread exploits' 


  With an apostrophe, macbeth personifies time, by blaming it for his lack of resoluteness.
• 'to crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done' - Macbeth


  The clear strain of antithesis between thinking and doing, shown in 'purpose', versus 'done'. The polyptoton of 'thoughts' and 'thought' with the noun preceeding the verb, suggesting that he allows his thought to manifest before he's even done any real thinking.
• 'double, double toil and trouble fire burn and cauldron bubble'


  The word 'double' connotes deception and double-dealing. The fact that double and trouble come together as a pair of internal rhyme, also reinforces the idea that the witches cause harm through their deceitful nature, with the causality of 'double' and 'trouble' being used through the internal rhyme, emphasizing their role as agents of chaos and malevolence.
• 'toil' word context


  In the Jacobean era, 'toil' meant a snare or trap, which creates the visual imagery of someone trapped in a bind ,vis-a-vis the witches' manipulative antics.
• 'bubble' and 'trouble' rhyming couplet


  In the Jacobean era, the word 'bubble' would have been linked to a deceptive show, and by juxtaposing it with 'trouble' it suggests that although the witches are instigators of trouble, their wicked shenanigans are more imaginary then real, and only those who are weak of mind and vulnerable to temptations would fall for.
• plosive alliteration: 'double double toil and trouble' 'cauldron bubble' 


  These abrupt, cacophonous sounds indicate an almost native violence on the witches' part. Paired with the trochaic tetrameter, it creates a stilted and contrived feeling which point to the witches' unnaturalness. As supernatural creatures rather than human beings, the witches stick out against the other characters as ontological anomalies and are representants of disorder and its attendant chaos in an otherwise orderly and human world.