Macbeth Meets The Witches Quotes

Where shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly 's done, when the battle 's lost and won

Whether it be because the Fall has really brought men nearer to less desirable neighbours in the spiritual world, or whether it is merely that the mood of men eager or greedy finds it easier to imagine evil, I believe that the black magic of witchcraft has been much more practical and much less poetical than the white magic of mythology. I fancy the garden of the witch has been kept much more carefully than the woodland of the nymph. I fancy the evil field has even been more fruitful than the good. To start with, some impulse, perhaps a sort of desperate impulse, drove men to the darker powers when dealing with practical problems. There was a sort of secret and perverse feeling that the darker powers would really do things; that they had no nonsense about them. And indeed that popular phase exactly expresses the point. The gods of mere mythology had a great deal of nonsense about them. They had a great deal of good nonsense about them; in the happy and hilarious sense in which we talk of the nonsense of Jabberwocky or the Land where Jumblies live. But the man consulting a demon felt as many a man has felt in consulting a detective, especially a private detective; that it was dirty work but the work would really be done. A man did not exactly go into the wood to meet a nymph; he rather went with the hope of meeting a nymph. It was an adventure rather than an assignation. But the devil really kept his appointments and even in one sense kept his promises; even if a man sometimes wished afterwards, like Macbeth, that he had broken them.

We meet the three sisters again in Shakespeare’s infamous Scottish play, the much lauded Macbeth. In the first act, when Macbeth is still King Duncan’s victorious war leader, he meets the three witches on the heath and they great him: First witch: “All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis!” Second witch: “All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!” Third witch: “All hail, Macbeth that shalt be king hereafter!” They have named his previous noble title, his new title, the Thane of Cawdor, gained when its rebellious former holder was executed; and the title that he does not yet have. If we understand these three hags as the ‘Wyrd,’ then they have just revealed Macbeth’s past, present, and future in chronological order.