![]() ![]() Since Macbeth hasn't yet met the Witches when he echoes their lines, we can speculate that the Witches have some form of supernatural power over him, perhaps partly exempting him from blame for his bloodlust. Macbeth's first words mimic the Witches' (though in inverse order), linking him to them and foreshadowing the harmful effects of their prophecy. This magnifies the fact that what the witches say is untrustworthy Macbeth echoes this line in Act 1, Scene 3: So foul and fair a day I have not seen. Shakespeare utilises this contradictory statement to highlight the fact that what the witches say is ambiguous therefore it is up to multiple interpretations. This rhyming couplet is a motif that is woven throughout the play. The interrelationship of Shakespeare's use of fricative consonants as well as chiasmus suggest that he wanted to accentuate the paradox that situations appear to be good when, in fact, they are deceptive and evil. ![]() Due to this, Shakespeare could be trying to ingratiate himself with the new king would offer patronage and support his acting troupe. King James believed that his life had been threatened by witches, and even wrote a book about witchcraft called 'Daemonologie'. ![]() When he does change this pattern, he does it to signal alarm or change, so automatically the witches become threatening figures. This would be immediately unsettling for a Shakespearean audience who are used to the otherwise consistent use of iambic pentameter in his plays. However, in this opening line the stress naturally falls onto "when" making it a trochaic metre/in trochaic pentameter. In iambic pentameter, which Shakespeare consistently uses, syllables follow the pattern of being stressed, then un-stressed. This can be directly linked to Lady Macbeth who uses the fact that she cannot obtain power by her own merit - her status is directly linked to her husband - to obtain power. "we three" - Those three witches are all women and in the patriarchal society in the Jacobean era women must turn to underhand methods to achieve any kind of power. ![]()
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