O p e n i n g s1 5asserts the significance of the Caves while syntactically playing
them down, a playing down which also serves to play them up. And
in doing so it foreshadows their ambiguous role in the story.
* * *We may turn now for a moment from fiction to drama. The first
scene of Macbeth reads as follows:
1st witch: When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
2nd witch: When the hurly- burly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.
3rd witch: That will be ere the set of sun.
1st witch: Where the place?
2nd witch: Upon the heath.
3rd witch: There to meet with Macbeth.
1st witch: I come, Graymalkin.
2nd witch: Paddock calls.
3rd witch: Anon!
All: Fair is foul, and foul is fair,
Hover through the fog and filthy air.There are three questions asked in these thirteen lines, two of them
right at the start. So the play opens on an interrogative note. In fact,
Macbeth as a whole is awash with questions, sometimes questions
responded to by another question, which helps to generate an
atmosphere of uncertainty, anxiety and paranoid suspicion. To ask
a question is to demand something determinate in response, but
not much in this play is that, least of all the witches. As old hags
with beards, it is even difficult to say what gender they belong to.