three witches

• Banquo is dismayed at their appearance; they don't look like they belong on earth (1.3)

  "So wither'd and so wild in their attire./ That look not like inhabitants o' the earth"
• The witches flatter MB and tell him he will be King (1.3)

  "All hail Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter"
• The witches tell Banquo that his sons will be King, this later torments Macbeth succession was important (1.3)

  "Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none. So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo"
• Banquo is wary of the witches; he believes that they might have told them small truths so that MB goes on to believe everything they say (1.3)

  "The instruments of darkness tell us truths,/ Win us with honest trifles, to betray's/ In deepest consequence"
• It seems ironic that the witches label MB wicked as the audience would feel that statement to be more true to them (4.1)

  "By pricking of my thumbs,/ something wicked this way comes."
• The witches cause MB to feel doubt as they tell him to beware of Macduff(4.1)

  "Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Beware Macduff./ Beware the thane of Fife"
• They lead MB to believe that he is invincible as they tell him no-one born by a woman can harm him. This is an example of equivocation as we later learn Macduff was born by caesarean (4.1)

  "Be bloody, bold and resolute. Laugh to scorn/ The power of man, for none of woman born/ Shall harm MB"
• Again, this prophesy causes MB to feel like he can't be defeated, but later Malcom uses the branches of the trees from Birnam Wood as camouflage. Another sample of equivocation (4.1)

  "Macbeth shall never vanquished be until/ Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill/ Shall come against him"
• At the end of the play, MB begins to realise that the witches have mislead them (5.5)

  MB:"I pull in resolution and begin/ To doubt th'equivocation of the fiend/ That lies like truth"
• Once he realises that the witch's have deceived him, Macbeth makes the link between the witches and the devil (5.8)

  MB:"The juggling fiends no more believed/ That patter with us in double sense."