Macbeth
Act One, Scene One.
When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning or in rain?
The play opens in a deserted, anti-social, wild place reflective of the witches’ malign intentions and aversion to law and order. Anarchy reigns here. Represents a place of fascination to Macbeth and even (temporarily) to Banquo. Yet how far is the human world of constant war and betrayal, truly different from this world of explicit otherness?
The ‘three’ witches represent an unholy trinity. Mockery of Christianity and a clear sign of their moral contamination.
The weather is disruptive and chaotic, ‘ fog and filthy air’ again a reflection of the witches. Pathetic fallacy is deployed to create an overriding sense of the sinister and impending doom. immersion in horror. Blindness to the intentions of the witches. Susceptibility. Or a strange version of permission to disguise behaviour? A metaphor for unconscious desires?
The storm ( mental chaos, psychological destabilisation) will continue inside the mind of Macbeth long after this first meeting. The witches gravitate towards Macbeth because they recognise his susceptibility due to his secret ambition. ‘ to meet with Macbeth’ is loaded with significance. It is like a spiritual ambush, a hijacking away of his nobility. He is a fellow ‘familiar like his wife.
To meet with Macbeth.
Macbeth’s name is first uttered by the witches so it is already soiled by association and the fact that they are able to deliberately coincide with Macbeth reveals their supernatural powers and malign intention. Fate is already being manipulated by otherworldly forces. How much free will resides with Macbeth we wonder? The verb ‘meet’ has connotations of something designed too? Orchestrated by those with shared interests?
Fair is foul.
Possibly the main dynamic of the play. Antithetical. Equivocation. Subversive. Witches are exiles. Physically fluid beings functioning as the unconscious. Inhabit their marginal community on the edge of a violent society to which they are the provocative fluid other. Encourages chaos and disorder. Reversal of conventional oppositions.
The paradox that directs the world’s morality into degenerate darkness. Yet what do we really see of goodness in the play? What is the purpose of the hierarchical order except for the maintenance of power? Scotland is a bloody place of endless war and violent death.
Interestingly, the witches are thus making the playfully explicit the society’s predilection for chaos.
Alliteration (specifically consonance) renders the mantra memorable. Insinuating, gleeful and seductive. Like the witches’ promises to Macbeth. Anchors listeners to highly attractive and desirable promotions and outcomes. Macbeth appears already contaminated by their mantra when he first appears on stage revealing the powers of darkness have already reached him. ‘ So fair and foul a day I have not seen.‘ Does he have a natural affinity with the witches or the weird sisters are they are called? Do they represent his unconscious desires?
This mantra drives the moral decline of Macbeth’s world. Seductive collapsing of the threshold between right and wrong. Opens up the mind to corruption and wickedness. Appearance and reality at odds with each other.
Hypocrisy. Feigned friendship and loyalty. Replicated in the ‘serpent’ lurking beneath the flower. What Macbeth fails to recognise sufficiently are the consequences of his craven actions on his relationships, mental health and even self-worth. He can commit regicide and thus gain the crown, the ‘ golden round’ but what lies beyond that usurpation? More and more bloodshed due to his increasing paranoia and recklessness.
This gleeful mantra transmits the palpable pleasure the witches derive from inflicting temptation on the susceptible. later in the play, Hecate finds the witches’ mischief cheap as Macbeth is too ordinary and trivial a victim of their games. This moment in Act three gives the audience a different viewpoint as we have been so uneasily intimate with Macbeth and his wife for so long, that we tend to lose perspective on their importance.
To the supernatural world, the Macbeths are a trivial diversion, easy victims of their malign energies.
