Macbett—Witches

Macbett—Witches traces a bond in which prophecy first seems to offer Macbett a map to power and then becomes the instrument of his ruin. The Witches’ predictions help make him king, but their partial disclosures also provoke suspicion and violence; by the final confrontation, Macbett relies on their assurances of safety while the forest he was told to fear advances against him.

Prophecy, Ambition, and Concealment

The relationship takes shape through predictions about political succession. Alone onstage, Banco reflects that the predictions have come true one by one: Macbett is to become king after Baron Candor and Baron Glamiss. He also recalls a prophecy that he would father a line of kings, princes, presidents, and dictators. Those forecasts give the men sharply different prospects. Macbett has acquired wealth, fame, power, and a wife; Banco, though promised the office of chamberlain, fears that Macbett will not honor the promise and resents the prospect of receiving none of the success foretold for his former companion.

Macbett overhears Banco’s reflection while hiding nearby. What alarms him is not only Banco’s envy but the possibility that Banco’s descendants, rather than Macbett’s, will inherit power. Macbett says that his wife and her maid had told Banco he would father a royal line, a disclosure he says was never made to him. The prophecy therefore operates as concealed information within the relationship: Banco has been told of a future that Macbett believes could threaten the dynasty his violence was meant to secure. Macbett interprets the omission as evidence of a sinister plot and decides to attack its supposed source.

The Prophecy Becomes a Cause of Violence

Macbett’s response is immediate. He calls Banco back and stabs him in the heart, treating the murder as a way to destroy Banco’s future lineage at its source. The scene turns a prediction about descendants into a present political motive: Macbett is not simply protecting his crown from a rival but trying to prevent the future promised to Banco. The Witches’ words thus reach into events even when they are not present in the exchange; what they have disclosed reshapes Macbett’s understanding of loyalty, inheritance, and danger.

The dramatic irony is sharpened by the difference between what the prophecy means to Banco and what Macbett makes of it. Banco takes the promised line of rulers as consolation for his lack of present status, even while acknowledging that he has no children and is not married. Macbett hears the same prospect as a threat to his own achievement. His attempt to master the prediction by killing Banco cannot make its influence disappear. Instead, it exposes how completely he has become governed by the future the predictions have made imaginable.

Assurances of Invulnerability

Later, Macbett invokes another prediction when challenged by Macol: no man of woman born can harm him. He treats the assurance as settled fact, dismissing Macol’s threat and warning that he can be defeated only when the forest marches against him. In that moment, prophecy functions as armor in Macbett’s mind. He relies on its wording to turn a confrontation into something he believes cannot endanger him.

The assurance proves disastrously incomplete. Macol tells Macbett that he has been deceived, and then points behind him: the forest is on the march. Men and women approach carrying placards marked with trees; the stage directions explain that, where resources allow, the set itself should move forward to encircle Macbett. Macbett turns and responds with a single exclamation of alarm. The warning he had treated as a remote condition has become the immediate shape of his defeat. The Witches’ predictions do not give him dependable control of events; their terms leave him exposed to the very circumstance he believed he could anticipate.

A Designed Trap

The Witches’ brief exchange after the earlier sequence clarifies the relation’s darker balance. They say that they have mixed things well, that Macbett will not be able to escape, and that their work will please their boss. Their words present the predictions and the consequences unfolding around Macbett not as neutral knowledge but as a scheme. The evidence does not explain every part of that scheme, but it establishes that the apparent gifts of foresight are bound up with deliberate entrapment.

Across the episodes, Macbett moves from benefiting from predictions of advancement to fearing what they promise for Banco, and finally to trusting an assurance that cannot save him. The Witches’ influence works through what is revealed, what is withheld, and the confidence with which Macbett interprets both. His effort to defeat destiny by eliminating Banco and his reliance on the invulnerability prophecy are opposite strategies, yet each leaves him acting within the future the predictions have set in motion. Their relationship is therefore less a partnership than a contest over knowledge in which Macbett mistakes access to prophecy for mastery of it.