Essay on Supernatural Forces in "Macbeth"

To begin, the witches are the catalyst to Macbeth’s crimes because the convince him that he will become king. Macbeth first meets the witches while returning from a gruesome battle and it is safe to say that they greet him with some audacious titles. They initially greet him as the Thane of Glamis and the Thane of Cawdor, but it is their final greeting which has the greatest effect on Macbeth. The witches hail Macbeth as someone “that shalt be king hereafter!” (1.3.53). This ignites a fire inside Macbeth, who is an immensely ambitious person. He begins to fantasize about the luxurious life he would have if he were the king of Scotland and he suddenly has the temptation to kill King Duncan. Although the witches’ prediction is favourable, Macbeth has no reason to believe them, at least until one of their other predictions turns out to be true. This

At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is a trusted soldier, who is honest and noble. Unfortunately, he meets three witches who tell him three prophecies; that he will become thane of Cawdor, that he will become king and that Banquo’s sons will become kings. These three prophecies slowly change his opinions on life and turn him into a greedy, dishonest, tyrant, full of ambition. Lady Macbeth’s thoughts change as well when she is told about the three prophecies that were told to Macbeth. In the beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth is

The supernatural has always fascinated and continues to intrigue mankind. In many of Shakespeare’s plays, he uses the supernatural to strengthen a particular scene or to influence the impression the audience has about someone or something. This was not strange or uncommon in Shakespeare’s time. In fact, during the 1500s, many people still believed in witches and witchcraft. Even in today’s society, with such advanced science and technology, many people are still influenced, if not dictated by the supernatural. For example, religious people have the belief that their saviour, Jesus Christ was a man of many miracles; one of which was he turned water into wine. Despite the fact that it

    The aura of darkness, deception, and horror present in William Shakespeare's tragedy, Macbeth, envelopes the entire play and is created mainly by the sense of violence and foreboding that is evoked by the imagery.  The dominant images of nature and the supernatural contribute to the atmosphere of this tragedy.  The predictions of the weird sisters, along with natural forces and supernatural images, have lead to chaos in Scotland due to their impact on the characters of the play, which brings about many delusions and deaths.

In this essay I am going to explore the use of the supernatural in the

The witches in Macbeth play a critical important role as at the beginning of the play the witches describe that all that is “fair is foul, and foul is fair” (Mac 1.1.10). Meaning that every thing that is pretty is ugly and everything ugly is pretty. The witches

Thunder and lightning is used once again to open Act I Scene 3. As the

Macbeth and Banquo was coming home from battle and stumbled onto the witches. There they were given their fates, Macbeth prophecy was to be thane of Glamis, thane of Cawdor, and finally king of Scotland. As king he couldn’t be killed by anyone of woman birth and he couldn't be defeated unless the Birnam Woods march on Dunsinane. The witches were tricking and deceiving Macbeth into thinking he is invinceable.

In Shakespeare's play The Tragedy of Macbeth, Shakespeare uses an underlying motif of the supernatural to control the characters and add a new dimension to the play.

In the beginning of the play, the witches make three prophecies. First, that Macbeth will become the Thane of Cawdor. The second part of the prophecy is that Macbeth will become King. The third prophecy being that Banquo will be father to future kings. When Macbeth first hears the prophecy, Duncan holds the position as king. King duncan is also a very loved king by his people. Macbeth and Duncan even have a good relationship. Macbeth is Duncan’s greatest war hero and because of Macbeth’s great success in battle, Duncan rewards him by promoting him to the position of Thane of Cawdor. With this promotion, Macbeth realizes that the witches first prophecy was true. With this realization, Macbeth’s head begins to fill with thoughts of killing King Duncan to speed up the process so that he can become king. When he tells his wife of the prophecies and his promotion, she becomes extremely

Macbeth and another general, Banquo, travel home from the battle and they meet the three witches, who predict that Macbeth will become the Thane of Cawdor, then later King of Scotland, and that Banquo will be the father of kings. They disappear and then a messenger tells Macbeth that the King has made him the Thane of Cawdor. Because

What if the supernatural had an influence on everyone's life? Would those influences change one’s fate or just the steps? In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare the audience is shown Macbeth, a soldier, fighting for his country and King Duncan. Macbeth is then confronted by three witches’ and given his first set of prophecies, his past, present and future titles. Because of these prophecies he goes on a murderous rampage to gain the title of King. He is then given four more prophecies, all misleading, that build his ambition on wanting to stay king. Although supernatural powers persuaded Macbeth into his demise, he still would have followed the same path without the witches as evidenced by the fact that he is bullheaded and self-centered.

The witches influence played a crucial part in contributing to Macbeth ultimate obliteration. At the beginning of the play, Macbeth praises as a victorious soldier and crowns as The Thane of Glamis. But after hearing the three witches' prophecies, “All hail, Macbeth! Hail thee, Thane of Glamis!, Thane of Cawdor!, that shalt be king hereafter”(Shakespeare I.iii.11), Macbeth's ambition rises and transforms him into an evil character. The witches try to create confusion by prophesying to Macbeth in order to get him to act.

Act 2 scene 1, Macbeth talks to the ground, as if it could hear him,

Said Lady Macbeth, “Nought’s had, all’s spent. Where our desire is got without content: ’Tis safer to be that which we destroy than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy.” In Act III, Scene i Macbeth said of the witches and the murder, “For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered; put rancours in the vessel of my peace only for them; and mine eternal jewel given to the common enemy of man.” In those sentences, we can see the irony in the witches’ prophecies. The implied meaning of the witches’ prophecies was that Macbeth would be king. Macbeth took this to mean that he would be a happy king, and so dreams of him on the throne appeared. He thought that becoming king would be easy, he just had to get Duncan out of the way. Everything turned out as Macbeth had imagined, except that he was not happy as the king. The guilt from Duncan’s murder, not to mention that of Banquo’s, made being the king a horrible experience for Macbeth, all because of the witches. This irony would make the audience mistrust the witches in the back of their minds, and therefore also put a vague fear over the whole play, because of the realisation of the witches’ relentless sinister determination to disrupt peace and order in Scotland.