Model paragraph - The witches

• We then follow the play where the paths of Macbeth and the witches intertwine. They announce that Macbeth will become ‘Thane of Cawdor’ and ‘King hereafter’. To which Macbeth responds with intrigue and almost in a spellbound matter.
• ‘If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me without my stir’. Macbeth knows that he will become king even if he doesn’t take action. Nonetheless his thoughts still go to the ‘horrid image’ of murder. We can infer this is because of his hamartia: bloodlust.
• Macbeth questions his own mind and intentions ‘why do i yield to that suggestion’ as he already understands that regicide is the most heinous crime in the Jacobean Era. Defying the Divine right of Kings as well as disrupting the great chain of being. The king was viewed in Jacobean society as the one appointed by god. This ultimately highlights that the witches only fuel his ambition and that it is his own desire for murder which is the greater evil.