Famous First Lines: Macbeth

The Scottish Play, as Macbeth (c. 1605) is referred to by superstitious actors everywhere, is also Shakespeare's shortest, making it a favorite of schoolchildren everywhere. It was the first play I took part in (I won't say I was acting; I was ten) and the first full-length play I saw in the theatre. It is a tightly constructed tragedy containing intense emotional conflict and manipulation, witches, hallucinations, sleepwalking, madness, ghosts, murder, mayhem, sword fights, and comic relief.

It is also a machine, wound up and set in motion by the Three Witches, who are variously interpreted as alluding to the three Fates of Greek mythology (Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos), or the three Scandinavian Norns (Urðr,Verðandi, and Skuld); whatever their genesis, they represent chaos and darkness and they inform us of Macbeth's inexorable fate -- that they also inform Macbeth is the problem.

Here's how they begin the play:

Act One, Scene One

A Desert Place

[Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches]
First Witch. When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch. When the hurlyburly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.
Third Witch. That will be ere the set of sun.
First Witch. Where the place?
Second Witch. Upon the heath.
Third Witch. There to meet with Macbeth.
First Witch. I come, Graymalkin!
Second Witch. Paddock calls.
Third Witch. Anon.
All. Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Cue thunder and lightning. You can't have creepy people on stage without the objective correlative of the storm underlining their wild nature, but it is also indicative of the human storm taking place in Scotland in the war being fought against invading Norwegians that Duncan mentions in the next scene. The action opens in "a desert (i.e. bleak) place" away from the usual haunts of men. This is appropriate for the weird sisters, who operate outside even the very elements (fire, water, earth, wind) and can command the weather.

Their language is odd, too. It's a deliberate break from Shakespeare's insistance on iambic pentameter, the lines being octosyllabic -- their very utterances are out of keeping with the more realistic blank verse or prose of the rest of the play. Plus they insist on rhyming, weaving neat, pat, hermetic phrases rife with spell-binding prophecy.

• when the hurlyburly's done,/ when the battle's lost and won./ That will be 'ere set of sun.
  

The hurlyburly is the fighting, of course, and the next line is key: it introduces the idea of polar opposites operating simultaneously, even becoming each other, an idea which Macbeth himself picks up when he has a moment of conscience before willfully casting his soul into the void.  "Lost and won": the two outcomes are simultaneous, but only one is visible depending on your perspective.

• Where the place?/ Upon the heath./ There to meet with Macbeth.

The heath is the wild desert place befitting a meeting with a man about to lose his soul.  The witches name Macbeth for us, conjuring his name as they are conjuring the encounter itself.

• I come, Graymalkin!/ Paddock calls./ Anon.

Witch-speak to entertain the audience (as some of the later business with Hecate, too, thrown in just as a crowd-pleaser and not even written by Shakespeare): Graymalkin is the name of a familiar.

• Fair is foul, and foul is fair:/ Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Apart from all the effing alliteration, again we see the central duality that is the key to understanding the play -- fair IS foul in this tragedy.  As Lady Macbeth instructs her husband later, "Look like the innocent flower,/ but be the serpent under it."  Everything in this play will be the opposite of what it seems -- host will be murderer, kinsman will be foe, friend will be fiend.  And the lady will go mad.