Act One: The Prophecy · Macbeth

Thunder and lightning on a desolate heath. Three witches meet in the storm.

"When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain?" "When the hurlyburly's done, when the battle's lost and won." "That will be ere the set of sun." "Where the place?" "Upon the heath." "There to meet with Macbeth." And they vanish, chanting: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: hover through the fog and filthy air."

Scotland was at war. Rebels under Macdonwald had risen against the old, gentle King Duncan, and the King of Norway had invaded with them, helped by a traitor, the Thane of Cawdor. A bleeding captain came from the battlefield to the king's camp and told how the day had been saved: by brave Macbeth, Thane of Glamis, the king's cousin, who had carved his way through the enemy with his sword, "like valour's minion," until he faced the rebel, and "unseamed him from the nave to the chops, and fixed his head upon our battlements"; and by Macbeth's fellow general, Banquo. The Norwegians had attacked again, and again Macbeth and Banquo had beaten them. The traitor Cawdor was taken. Duncan ordered his death, and gave his title to Macbeth: "What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won."

On the heath, Macbeth and Banquo, riding from the battle, met the three witches. "So foul and fair a day I have not seen," said Macbeth. They were strange creatures, withered and wild, that looked not like the inhabitants of the earth, and yet were on it. They hailed him:

"All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!" "All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!" "All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!"

Macbeth started, as if afraid. Banquo asked them what they had for him. "Lesser than Macbeth, and greater." "Not so happy, yet much happier." "Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none." Macbeth called after them for more — how could he be Thane of Cawdor, when Cawdor lived? — but they vanished into the air, like bubbles.

And then two noblemen, Ross and Angus, rode up with the king's thanks — and told Macbeth that he was now Thane of Cawdor.

"Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor," said Macbeth to himself: "the greatest is behind." Banquo warned him: "Oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray's in deepest consequence." But Macbeth was lost in thought. The witches had spoken true twice; and the third — the throne — rose before him; and with it, already, the thought of murder, "whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, and make my seated heart knock at my ribs." "Present fears are less than horrible imaginings." Then he drew back: "If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, without my stir."

At the palace at Forres, Duncan received his generals with love and gratitude — and then named his elder son, Malcolm, Prince of Cumberland: heir to the throne. Macbeth, aside, saw it as a step he must fall down or else o'erleap: "Stars, hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires." And the king announced that he would honour Macbeth by staying the night at his castle at Inverness.

At Inverness, Lady Macbeth read a letter from her husband telling her of the witches and their prophecy. She knew him; she feared his nature: "It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it." She would pour her spirits in his ear.

A messenger came: the king would be there that night. She called upon the dark powers to harden her:

"The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements. Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood . . . Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark to cry 'Hold, hold!'"

Macbeth came home. "My dearest love, Duncan comes here tonight." "And when goes hence?" "Tomorrow, as he purposes." "O, never shall sun that morrow see! . . . Look like th' innocent flower, but be the serpent under't." Leave all the rest to her.

Duncan arrived in the evening light, and praised the castle: "This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses." Lady Macbeth welcomed him with perfect grace.

During the feast, Macbeth slipped away, and wrestled with himself.

"If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly." If only the deed could end everything — but there was judgement even in this life; the poisoned cup came back to the poisoner's own lips. And Duncan was here in double trust: as his kinsman and his king, and as his guest, whose host should shut the door against the murderer, not bear the knife himself. And the king had been so good, so meek, so clear in his great office, that his virtues "will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against the deep damnation of his taking-off; and pity, like a naked new-born babe, striding the blast . . . shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, that tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, and falls on th' other."

His wife came to find him. "We will proceed no further in this business," he told her. "He hath honoured me of late."

She turned on him with scorn. Was the hope drunk in which he had dressed himself? Was he afraid to be the same in act as he was in desire — "letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would,' like the poor cat i' th' adage?" "Prithee, peace. I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none." "What beast was't, then, that made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man." She had sworn, she said, and she would sooner have done the most unnatural thing a mother could do to her own child than break an oath as he had sworn to this.

Lady Macbeth's lines here, about the infant at her breast, are among the most violent in Shakespeare; they are summarised rather than quoted.

"If we should fail?" "We fail! But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail." She had a plan: she would drug Duncan's two attendants with wine, so that they slept like pigs; then the two of them would kill the sleeping king, and smear the grooms with his blood, and lay their daggers by them, so that the crime would fall on them.

"Bring forth men-children only," said Macbeth, "for thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males." He was resolved. "False face must hide what the false heart doth know."