The witches urge Macbett to seize the throne

The witches’ temptation of Macbett turns prophecy into a political offer: Lady Duncan promises him power beside her, urges him to act against Duncan, and shields that ambition with predictions of military invulnerability. Its force lies in the fusion of seduction, royal imagery, and political justification. Macbett is not simply told that he may rise; he is shown a future in which violence makes him sovereign and can be presented as a rescue of the country.

The witches turn suspicion into intimacy

Macbett first challenges the witches’ declared concern for him. He asks whether they truly have his interests at heart and whether justice matters enough to them to sacrifice themselves for his happiness, calling them old hags and asking if they would give up their lives. The First Witch answers, “Because we love you, Macbett.” The Second Witch amplifies that claim: the First loves him as much as she loves her country, justice, and the commonwealth. Love and public duty are thus made to sound like the same allegiance, a rationale that will soon recast Macbett’s private desire as a national cause.

The scene makes that persuasion visible through a staged transformation. The Second Witch circles the First, reciting a string of Latin prepositions as she removes the signs of age: glasses, an old shawl, and the First Witch’s pointed chin. Beneath the shawl appears a beautiful, glittering dress; music grows more melodic as the First Witch sings. The Second Witch throws away her stick, and the First Witch’s face and mouth become visible in the light. The repeated circling turns the removal of disguises into a ceremony, gradually replacing the image of an old witch with the appearance of a powerful woman.

Lady Duncan offers ambition a crown

The First Witch is revealed as Lady Duncan, while the Second Witch becomes her young, beautiful lady-in-waiting. Macbett responds by falling to his knees. The revelation changes the encounter’s political character: the promised love and authority now come from the king’s wife, not an anonymous supernatural voice. The stage sharpens the reversal when the lady-in-waiting tears away Lady Duncan’s sumptuous dress, leaving her in a sparkling bikini, with a black-and-red cape, a scepter, and a dagger. The regalia and weapon place rule and violence together in the same image.

Macbett offers to be Lady Duncan’s slave. She answers with a conditional invitation to belong to him, holding out the dagger as “the instrument of your ambition and our rise to power.” She tells him to take it if he wants her and to act boldly; he will take Duncan’s place at her side, she says, while she becomes his mistress and he her sovereign. The blade is given a future meaning as well as an immediate use: its indelible bloodstain will be a souvenir of success and a spur to further deeds. Her offer makes the proposed seizure of power intimate and reciprocal, but the dagger keeps its violent cost in view.

Hesitation, prophecy, and consent

Macbett does not accept at once. He voices scruples and trails off before completing a request to avoid the proposed course. Lady Duncan answers by distinguishing courage from freedom from fear: even brave men have weaknesses, moments of cowardice, and guilt, which she calls mortal. She then points to Macbett’s service under orders, reminding him that he was never afraid to kill when someone else commanded it. His hesitation is therefore set against his prior obedience; the scene presses him to carry out for himself the violence he has previously performed at another’s direction.

Lady Duncan couples that pressure with the witches’ assurances. She promises that no man of woman born will conquer Macbett and that no other army will defeat his army until the forest arms itself and marches against him. The lady-in-waiting dismisses that condition as practically impossible and declares that the couple seeks only to save their country and build a better society. This language makes their prospective power sound protective and reforming, even as the dagger, the planned replacement of Duncan, and the promise of future glory make its violent basis unmistakable. The scene does not establish that Macbett is free of scruple; it shows those scruples being met with desire, reassurance, and a political excuse.

A theatrical conversion into ambition

The transformations culminate in a shift of mood and allegiance. As the stage darkens, Macbett rolls at Lady Duncan’s feet, while the light leaves her glistening body as the visible focus. The lady-in-waiting voices “Omnia vincit amor,” and the scene ends in blackout. Love has served as the language of the appeal, but the action that appeal solicits is the acquisition of Duncan’s place. The movement from grotesque disguise to royal display, and from Macbett’s questions to his submission, makes the witches’ persuasion a performed conversion rather than a bare prediction.

The episode’s assurances sit uneasily beside the political world around it. Macbett has elsewhere treated Duncan’s orders as the limit of his action, answering a demand about a prisoner with “Your orders, my good lord.” Banco, meanwhile, insists that Duncan owes him a promised title or lands and says, “It's impossible. He can't do this to me.” Macbett later proposes trying “other arguments” and, if necessary, stronger ones to make Duncan yield. These exchanges do not erase the difference between a denied reward and a plot to seize the throne; they show a court where loyalty, promised advancement, and coercion already contend. Against that background, Lady Duncan’s offer gives Macbett’s ambition a partner, a weapon, and a prophecy—and dresses the pursuit of sovereignty in the language of love and national salvation.