© Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved.NOTESthe terrible and uncertain decisions that occupy it. The play as a
whole is greatly preoccupied with time; the Show of Kings itself
covers many generations, and there is lasting concern about lineal
descendants, Macbeth fearing that whereas he has no prospect of
dynastic successors, Banquo has—a difference underlined by the
Weird Sisters. The way to succeed Duncan was to kill him; the way to
prevent the succession of Banquo’s heirs was to kill both Banquo and
Fleance. In both cases it was necessary to consider interference with
the future as the Sisters foresaw it. So, in the early part of the play,
the verse is full of equivocations about the present and the future, as
forecast by the gnomic sayings of the Three Sisters.
Their opening lines represent a new departure, for they tell us nothing
directly about the subject of the play, speaking only of the future as
perceived from the present. “When shall we three meet again? / In
thunder, lightning, or in rain?” offers an apparent choice of weathers
that is not a choice at all, which partly prefigures the plight of Macbeth
and suggests a vain selection of some aspects of futurity at the expense
of others not mentioned—fine weather, for instance. The answer to these
questions is “When the hurlyburly’s done, / When the battle’s lost and
won.” Hurlies and burlies go together like thunder and lightning, won
battles are also lost; so we have false antitheses, ghostly choices, an ironic
parody of human powers of prediction. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”
is a paradox echoed by Macbeth in the first line he speaks (I.iii.38). In
his mouth the words may be taken at face value, as referring to the bad
weather on one hand and the pleasures of victory on the other; the Sisters’
use of the idea is darker and more complex. Perhaps what strikes them
as fair is what to others would be foul, a crown got by crime, for instance.
The paradox is oracular; oracles are traditionally equivocal. Macbeth is a
play of prophecy focussed, with great concentration, on the desire to feel
the future in the instant, to be transported “beyond the ignorant present.”
When Macbeth asks the Sisters, “what are you?” (I.iii.47), their reply is to
tell him what he will be. The present is the long interim between thought
and act (an interim that disappears when Macbeth decides to let the
firstlings of his heart become the firstlings of his hand, “To crown my
thoughts with acts, be it thought and done” [IV.i.149]). The first part of the
play is set in a time when there is still a gap between the thought and the
deed, and its language enacts this dizzying gap.
Here, perhaps more than in any other of Shakespeare’s plays, an
idiosyncratic rhythm and a lexical habit establish themselves with a sort
of hypnotic firmness. “Lost and won,” say the Sisters at the beginning
of the first scene: “What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won,” says
Duncan at the end of the second, having just before that rhymed
“Macbeth” with “death.” These moments of ingrown self-allusion
contrast with the old-style rant of the bleeding Sergeant. The scene in
which Macbeth and Banquo encounter the Sisters (I.iii) fully exhibits
the new and peculiar ambiguous, doubling manner. Are these figures
inhabitants of the earth or not? Men or women? Alive or not? They reply
with their prophecy: he is already Glamis, will be Cawdor, will be King.34Mark context clues or indicate
another strategy you used that
helped you determine meaning.
idiosyncratic (ihd ee uh sihn
KRAT ihk) adj.
MEANING:from Macbeth 391LIT17_SE12_U03_B2_SG.indd 391PERSONALIZE FOR LEARNING 2/21/16 11:09 AM
English Language Support
Word Study: Oracular Review paragraph 3. Help
students parse the short but complex sentence,
“The paradox is oracular; oracles are traditionally
equivocal.” Remind readers that Oracles in
ancient Greece were priests or priestesses through
whom a deity spoke, often in riddles, often as
prophesies of things to come. (The word oracle
can refer to the person, the words, or the place
where it all happens.) When the Oracle spoke,everyone listened, and so the adjective oracular
now means “authoritative and wise” but also
carries a connation of “dictatorial, dogmatic.”
Equivocal means “having two of more possible
meanings,” and so dovetails with the idea of
paradox. Use the concept to spark a discussion.
Ask: Is there anything or anyone in our modern
world that you might consider oracular? If so,
who is it and why? BridgingSmall-Group Learning 391
LIT17_TE12_U03_B2_SG.indd 391 16-04-11 7:07 AM