The Supernatural

The Theme in the Work

The supernatural opens the play. In scene 1 of Act I, the Witches arrange to meet Macbeth amid thunder and lightning, and the scene closes with a line in chorus that mixes the beautiful and the rotten. In scene 3 of Act I, on the heath, they greet Macbeth and promise Banquo sons who will be kings.

In scene 4 of Act III, Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo seated in his place, which the guests do not see. In scene 5 of Act III, Hecate rebukes the witches for having dealt with Macbeth without calling her, and promises illusions that will lead him to scorn Destiny.

In scene 1 of Act IV, the witches' cavern holds the three apparitions: an armed head, a bloody child, and a crowned child with a tree in his hand, and the promise of Birnam wood. In scene 5 of Act V, the Messenger swears he sees the wood advancing, and Macbeth begins to suspect how the devil plays with words.

The play also makes nature respond to the crime, and this is another side of the supernatural: the natural order broken. Before the murder, in scene 1 of Act II, Macbeth says that over half the world nature seems dead and that sinful dreams trouble the sleep of those who sleep. After it, in scene 2 of Act II, he hears a voice cry that he has murdered Sleep, and the rest he has lost follows him through the play, from the nightmares he confesses in Act III to the sleepwalking of Lady Macbeth in Act V. In scene 3 of Act II, on the morning Duncan is found dead, Lennox reports that the wind blew down chimneys, that cries of death were heard in the air, that the owl shrieked all night, and that the earth seemed feverish. In scene 4 of Act II, Ross observes that the clock says day but the dark night chokes the light, and the Old Man recalls that, the Tuesday before, an owl that hunts mice killed a falcon in full flight. Ross adds that Duncan's horses, the finest of their breed, broke their stalls as if they declared war on men, and the Old Man says that, as it is told, they devoured one another, which Ross confirms he saw. The Old Man sums up that none of this is of Nature, just as the deed that was done is not. In scene 1 of Act V, the Doctor who watches the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth says that acts against Nature breed unnatural troubles.

Here the supernatural does not come from the Witches but from the common world that reacts to the crime. Ross and the Old Man link the omens to Duncan's death, and the play suggests that killing a king breaks an order in which the realm, men, and animals are bound together, as if Nature took sides. Macbeth's lost sleep and Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking show the same rupture inside people. That is why, when the Doctor says that acts against Nature breed unnatural troubles, he describes at once the castle and the couple.

The play leaves the supernatural ambiguous wherever it can. The ghost of Banquo is seen by one man only, and the moving wood is soldiers carrying branches, and in both cases the human explanation is in plain view. The witches and the prophecy, on the other hand, the play does not explain. The formula of the beautiful that is rotten, in scene 1 of Act I, serves this ambiguity: what looks like a prodigy may also be what fear and strategy are already enough to produce.

Where It Appears

• Scene 1 of Act I: Amid thunder and lightning, the witches arrange to meet Macbeth on the moor, and the scene ends with a chorus line that mixes the beautiful and the rotten.
• Scene 3 of Act I: On the heath, the witches greet Macbeth as Thane of Glamis, of Cawdor, and future king, and promise Banquo sons who will be kings, and then vanish.
• Scene 2 of Act II: Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth that he heard a voice cry that he murdered the innocent Sleep, and that for this reason Cawdor and Macbeth will sleep no more.
• Scene 3 of Act II: Lennox describes the night of the murder, with wind that brings down chimneys, cries of death in the air, the owl complaining without pause, and the earth feverish and trembling.
• Scene 4 of Act II: Ross and the Old Man see the day darkened by night, a falcon killed by an owl, and Duncan's horses, which broke their stalls and devoured one another.
• Scene 4 of Act III: Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost seated in his place at the banquet table, and the guests see no one.
• Scene 5 of Act III: Hecate rebukes the witches for having dealt with Macbeth without calling her, and promises illusions that will lead him to scorn Destiny.
• Scene 1 of Act IV: In a cave of the marsh, Macbeth is faced with an armed head that tells him to beware Macduff, a bloody child, and a crowned child with a tree in his hand.
• Scene 5 of Act V: A Messenger swears he sees the wood of Birnam advancing, and Macbeth, shaken, begins to doubt the promise about Birnam that deluded him.

Passages

The chorus of the witches:

Macbeth's voice before the ghost:

The third apparition: