The Second Witch is one of three supernatural sisters who occupy the margins of Scotland, speaking in riddles and prophecies that blur the line between fate and temptation. She appears first on the blasted heath, where she and her sisters hail Macbeth with three titles—Glamis, Cawdor, and King hereafter—that set in motion the tragedy of the play. Her role is not to command murder but to speak truths twisted by equivocation, words that sound like one thing but mean another. When Macbeth asks who told them to meet him, she answers, “When the hurlyburly’s done, / When the battle’s lost and won”—a perfectly accurate description of a moment in time that could be any moment, any battle. Her language is intentionally ambiguous, designed to plant ideas rather than give orders.
The Second Witch’s presence is defined by her participation in ritual and incantation. In Act 4, when Macbeth returns to demand more prophecies, she and her sisters gather around a cauldron and chant the famous words “Double, double toil and trouble; / Fire burn and cauldron bubble,” creating an atmosphere of dark magic that is both ridiculous and genuinely unsettling. She contributes ingredients to the witches’ brew—“Eye of newt and toe of frog, / Wool of bat and tongue of dog”—and helps summon the apparitions that give Macbeth false comfort. She is neither the leader (that is Hecate’s role, though she arrives later) nor the follower, but an equal participant in a kind of supernatural conspiracy. Her voice is distinct yet indistinguishable from her sisters’; the play often gives them lines collectively, marked simply as “ALL,” suggesting they are less three individuals than one entity wearing three faces.
What makes the Second Witch particularly effective is that she speaks only when necessary and always in service of the play’s central theme: that words can deceive, that truth can be weaponized, and that ambition can be provoked by the mere suggestion of possibility. She never explains herself, never justifies her actions, and shows no moral awareness. She simply speaks, and in speaking, shapes the destinies of men. Her few direct lines are always functional—reporting what others have done, confirming prophecies, or contributing to the witches’ chorus. Yet within those constraints, Shakespeare gives her language that is precise, rhythmic, and deeply unsettling. She is not a character with an inner life, but a voice from outside the human world, and that distance from human feeling is what makes her most terrifying.
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.
Second Witch · 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.
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Double, double, trouble and work; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch · Act 4, Scene 1
The witches chant over their boiling cauldron as they prepare the magical brews that will summon the apparitions Macbeth demands. The line has become the signature incantation of witchcraft itself, repeated and parodied for four centuries. It captures the play's central engine: supernatural forces that speak in riddles and seem to grant wishes while actually leading their believers toward ruin.
