Choice macbeth play opening witches shakespeare presents and

Text	explore how Shakespeare presents choice in the play Argument (AO1) and Analysis (AO2): The extract, which forms the opening scene of the play, establishes a strange and nightmarish world where it seems Macbeth will lack any kind of agency in the face of the supernatural power of the three witches. The play begins with the first witch asking her two companions ‘When shall we three meet again / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?’ On a simplistic level, this opening line associates the witches with these elemental forces and with the disorder of a storm—which appear in many of Shakespeare’s plays, like ‘King Lear’ (AO3), as symbols of societal disorder.}} {{c2::The meter of the lines too seems unnatural. Shakespeare begins only four other plays (‘A Comedy of Errors’, ‘Henry XIII’, ‘Pericles’ and ‘Two Noble Kinsmen’) with rhyming couplets, and none begin in trochaic tetrameter. Given that the effect is to invert the usual iambic rhythms of Shakespeare’s verse, there is the immediate suggestion of the witches as unnatural beings. Combined with the fact that these monstrous supernatural beings begin by discussing Macbeth and where they will meet him, what does this suggest about his agency—or rather, his lack of agency—in the play? Particularly given how the three witches also seem to parallel the three Fates in Greek mythology (AO3). Yet what is perhaps more elusive and disturbing about this opening line is that it presents a choice that is, fundamentally, not a choice at all. Thunder, lightning and rain do, of course, appear simultaneously in a storm; the first witch does not juxtapose such inclement weather with ‘fair’ sunshine and bright skies, after all. How could this foreshadow their later paradoxical prophecies to Macbeth and his choice to follow the disturbing fate they set out for him? Alternatively, perhaps it is worth also considering how there is a suggestion here that the witches’ concept of time itself is somehow different and distinct from the world of the mortals—for them, ‘thunder’, ‘lightning’ and ‘rain’ are separate events. This is something that is perhaps compounded in the way in which Macbeth’s first lines in the play are to exclaim to his friend Banquo that ‘so foul and fair a day I have not seen’ showing his language already to be infected by the malign power of the witches. What does this imply about his later choice to become a regicide? Or what about the witches’ metaphor, moments before Macbeth appears onstage, when they end their chant by saying ‘the charm’s wound up’. Look at the implications of this metaphor—think about the notion of their magic setting up a kind of clockwork mechanism in which Macbeth would appear to have no choice or free will.

Text

explore how Shakespeare presents choice in the play

Argument (AO1) and Analysis (AO2):

The extract, which forms the opening scene of the play, establishes a strange and nightmarish world where it seems Macbeth will lack any kind of agency in the face of the supernatural power of the three witches.

The play begins with the first witch asking her two companions ‘When shall we three meet again / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?’
On a simplistic level, this opening line associates the witches with these elemental forces and with the disorder of a storm—which appear in many of Shakespeare’s plays, like ‘King Lear’ (AO3), as symbols of societal disorder.}}

{{c2::The meter of the lines too seems unnatural. Shakespeare begins only four other plays (‘A Comedy of Errors’, ‘Henry XIII’, ‘Pericles’ and ‘Two Noble Kinsmen’) with rhyming couplets, and none begin in trochaic tetrameter.

Given that the effect is to invert the usual iambic rhythms of Shakespeare’s verse, there is the immediate suggestion of the witches as unnatural beings. Combined with the fact that these monstrous supernatural beings begin by discussing Macbeth and where they will meet him, what does this suggest about his agency—or rather, his lack of agency—in the play? Particularly given how the three witches also seem to parallel the three Fates in Greek mythology (AO3).

Yet what is perhaps more elusive and disturbing about this opening line is that it presents a choice that is, fundamentally, not a choice at all. Thunder, lightning and rain do, of course, appear simultaneously in a storm; the first witch does not juxtapose such inclement weather with ‘fair’ sunshine and bright skies, after all. How could this foreshadow their later paradoxical prophecies to Macbeth and his choice to follow the disturbing fate they set out for him?

Alternatively, perhaps it is worth also considering how there is a suggestion here that the witches’ concept of time itself is somehow different and distinct from the world of the mortals—for them, ‘thunder’, ‘lightning’ and ‘rain’ are separate events.

This is something that is perhaps compounded in the way in which Macbeth’s first lines in the play are to exclaim to his friend Banquo that ‘so foul and fair a day I have not seen’ showing his language already to be infected by the malign power of the witches. What does this imply about his later choice to become a regicide?

Or what about the witches’ metaphor, moments before Macbeth appears onstage, when they end their chant by saying ‘the charm’s wound up’. Look at the implications of this metaphor—think about the notion of their magic setting up a kind of clockwork mechanism in which Macbeth would appear to have no choice or free will.

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