Act 1: Prophecies & Lady Macbeth
The Witches’ Prophecies (Act 1, Scene 3)
The witches greet Macbeth with three titles: “All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!” (his current title), “Thane of Cawdor!” (a title he does not yet know he has been awarded), and “that shalt be king hereafter!” Each prophecy escalates in ambition, creating a structural pattern that pulls Macbeth toward the crown. Crucially, the first is already true and the second comes true within minutes when Ross arrives — making the third seem inevitable.
Banquo’s response is cautious: “And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, / The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s / In deepest consequence.” This is the play’s most explicit warning that the witches use partial truths as bait. Banquo recognises the danger; Macbeth does not. The contrast establishes Banquo as a foil for Macbeth.
The witches give Macbeth three titles: Glamis (true), Cawdor (confirmed moments later), king (the fatal temptation). Banquo warns that “the instruments of darkness tell us truths” to “betray’s in deepest consequence” — but Macbeth ignores this, beginning his moral descent.
Macbeth’s First Aside — “If Good, Why Do I Yield?”
In his first long aside (Act 1, Scene 3), Macbeth reveals that murder has already entered his mind: “Why do I yield to that suggestion / Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair / And make my seated heart knock at my ribs?” The word “yield” suggests surrender. His body reacts physically: hair standing on end, heart pounding. The thought of regicide terrifies him even as it fascinates him.
The line “If good, why do I yield to that suggestion?” is the central question about fate versus free will. The witches never tell Macbeth to kill Duncan — they simply prophesy kingship. The “horrid image” of murder comes from within Macbeth himself. Shakespeare leaves it deliberately ambiguous: do the witches plant the idea, or reveal an ambition that already existed?
When Duncan names Malcolm as heir, Macbeth’s aside reveals darkening intent: “Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires.” The light/dark imagery is crucial — Macbeth asks the universe to conceal his evil. “Black and deep desires” uses colour symbolism (black = sin) and “deep” suggests these desires are fundamental, not recently planted. “The eye wink at the hand” separates sight from action — he wants to act without acknowledging what he does.
Lady Macbeth’s “Unsex Me Here” Soliloquy (Act 1, Scene 5)
Lady Macbeth reads Macbeth’s letter about the prophecies and immediately resolves to push him toward murder. Her assessment is brutally honest: “It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way.” The metaphor of “milk” is deliberately feminine — she associates his hesitation with nurturing weakness. “The nearest way” is a euphemism for murder.
Her invocation is one of Shakespeare’s most disturbing speeches: “Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty.” She asks to be stripped of femininity — compassion, nurturing instinct, moral hesitation. “Make thick my blood; / Stop up the access and passage to remorse” uses bodily imagery suggesting guilt physically blocked. “Come to my woman’s breasts, / And take my milk for gall” transforms nurturing milk into bitter poison.
Lady Macbeth’s “unsex me here” soliloquy asks evil spirits to strip her femininity, block her capacity for remorse, and replace nurturing instincts with cruelty. She calls on “thick night” to hide the murder from heaven — paralleling Macbeth’s “Stars, hide your fires.”
Act 1, Scene 7 — “Vaulting Ambition”
In his most morally conscious soliloquy, Macbeth lists reasons not to kill Duncan: he is Duncan’s kinsman, subject, and host — “who should against his murderer shut the door, / Not bear the knife myself.” Duncan “hath borne his faculties so meek” and killing such a virtuous king will cause outrage. His only motive is “vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself / And falls on the other.” The horse-leaping image captures how unchecked ambition destroys itself.
Macbeth concludes: “We will proceed no further in this business.” His conscience wins — until Lady Macbeth enters.
Lady Macbeth uses three tactics. First, she attacks his masculinity: “When you durst do it, then you were a man.” She equates murder with manliness and hesitation with cowardice. Second, the shocking infanticide image: “I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, / And dashed the brains out.” Third, she presents a practical plan: frame the guards with blood and their daggers.
Macbeth capitulates: “I am settled, and bend up / Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.” “Bend” suggests forcing his body against its will. His final line — “False face must hide what the false heart doth know” — echoes the witches’ “fair is foul,” completing his descent into their moral world.
The Power Dynamic Between the Macbeths
In Act 1, Lady Macbeth is the dominant partner. She plans the murder, manages practical details, and controls Macbeth’s emotions. She tells him to “look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t” — the Biblical allusion to Eden’s serpent links her to Satan as tempter.
This power dynamic reverses dramatically. By Act 3, Macbeth plans Banquo’s murder without consulting his wife. By Act 5, Lady Macbeth is destroyed by guilt she once dismissed. Shakespeare structures the play as a chiasmus: Lady Macbeth begins strong and crumbles; Macbeth begins hesitant and becomes a remorseless tyrant.