The witches

• “Hurly-burly”


  • The witches open the play, they have no interest of the civil war
  • childish vocabulary - civil war is like a game / entertainment
  • they are separate to society - war is trivial to them
• “When battles’ lost then won”


  • They plan to meet Macbeth
  • they don’t have a side
  • alien to society
  • they live in a wild ‘heath’
• “Fair is foul and foul is fair”


  • They exist outside of the social contrast of Scotland society in the play
  • they invite the moral order of Scotland
  • make bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people
  • macbeth opposite to Macduff
• “Though his cannot be lost yet it shall be tempest- tossed”


  • Plot to curse a soldier whose wife has been rude to them
  • they don’t have the power to kill directly
  • they torment and manipulate people such as Macbeth
• “The instruments of darkness tell us the truth“


  • banquo is wary of them
  • darkness = the witches
  • Banquo spots their nature straight away, that their manipulative, deceptive and equivocators
• “Seek to know no more“ 


  • Macbeth seeks out the witches a final time. they are now in control
  • imperative verb = seek
  • at the start they go to him, now he goes to them, showing the shift in power