Three witches meet on a blasted heath during a storm. They speak in riddling verse about thunder, lightning, and battle, establishing an atmosphere of supernatural chaos. They conjure a mysterious familiar and agree to meet again after the fighting ends, where they will encounter a man named Macbeth. The scene ends with their chant: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair."
This opening scene establishes the play's moral inversion and supernatural frame. The witches' paradox—"Fair is foul, and foul is fair"—announces that nothing in this world will be what it seems. Good and evil become indistinguishable. The witches aren't simply evil creatures; they're forces of ambiguity itself, speaking in riddles and equivocations that blur truth and falsehood. By naming Macbeth before he has done anything, they plant a seed of prophecy that will drive the entire tragedy. The scene's brevity and strangeness create an unsettling tone: we don't yet know who Macbeth is, why the witches want him, or what their prediction means.
The witches' language—fragmented, chanting, full of rhyme—separates this supernatural realm from the normal world. They summon familiars (Graymalkin and Paddock, a cat and a toad), suggesting they traffic with dark forces. Yet Shakespeare makes them oddly familiar, almost comical in their petty malice. The hectic, stormy opening ("thunder, lightning, or rain") connects the witches to disorder and chaos in nature itself. When the scene ends with the witches vanishing into the storm, we understand they exist between worlds—neither fully real nor imaginary. They set the play's central question: Are they orchestrating Macbeth's fate, or simply naming what his own ambition will create?
Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.
Good is bad, and bad is good: We fly through the mist and dirty air.
All (Chorus) · Act 1, Scene 1
The three witches chant this paradox as they vanish into the mist after promising Macbeth the crown. It is the play's first and most crystalline statement of its moral universe—one where good and evil are inverted, where words lie, where prophecies are traps. Everything that follows is an unraveling of this single inversion.
When the hurlyburly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won.
When the confusion’s over, When the battle’s both lost and won.
Second Witch · Act 1, Scene 1
The second witch answers the first's question about when they will meet again, setting the play's machinery in motion: when the battle ends, they will meet Macbeth on the heath. The response is deceptively simple, but it establishes that the witches know the future and have already decided to intercept the newly victorious general. Their certainty suggests they are not random supernatural beings but agents pulling Macbeth toward his doom.
Original Shakespeare alongside modern English. Synced read-along narration in the app.
