The witches

• "When shall we three meet again"

  • This immediately establishes a sense of mystery and secrecy for the audience.
• "beards"

  • throughout the text masculinity is synonymous with power, thus this description imbues them with a threatening dominance
• Witches physiognomy (when appearances are believed to be reflective of your true character)

  • exposes them as inhumane and evil "look not like the inhabitants of earth"
• 'Trochaic tetrameter' - this gives their speech an eerie songlike quality

  'Instruments of darkness' - suggesting their musicality

  'Rhyming Couplets' - makes it sinister almost like a dark nursery rhyme or spell
• Speaks in paradoxes and oxymorons

  • "Fair is foul and foul is fair" foreshadows the overarching theme of appearances verses reality
  • oxymoron conveys the ambiguity of their prophecies
• Act 3 - link to religion

  • The witches appear synonymous with wickedness and hell to compound how the interference with the supernatural is inherently evil
• "The pit of Acheron"

  • Acheron was one of the rivers that ran through hades
  • The witches are inexplicably linked with hell.
• • In Christian society, there is a holy trinity which is the idea that God exists in 3 different forms.
  • They appear as a trio they could be seen as the anti - trinity as they persistently tempt fate
• Act 4 - The deceitful predictions amplifies the theme of deception and equivocation

  • Speak in proverbial suernatural phrases such as "eye of newt" , "fire burn and cauldron bubble" , and "hell - broth , boil and bubble"
  • Their are allusions to heat and hell to epitomise their evil nature
• Witches summon three appartitions which are manifestations of the threats Macbeth face

  • "An armed head" - emblematic of the violence of battle and foreshadows Macbeth's decapitation
  • "A bloody child" - serves to represent Macduff
  • "A child crowned with a tree in his hand" - tree is emblematic of Birnam Wood
• Macbeth's delusions

  • Macbeth's hubris is explicitly
  • Speaks with imperative phrases "tell me" and "call em" he is driven by greed and hunger for power.
  • Threatens the witches with an "eternal curse" which is ironic as the Witches gave him his power
  • Prophecies are equivocal "none of woman born shall harm Macbeth" which is ambiguous.
  • Temporary sense of security and blood-thirst