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L.C. Knights’s earlier and very influentialaccount of Macbeth in Explorations (1946) wenteven further in insisting on the firmness of theplay’s “positive values”. For Knights, the “maintheme of the reversal of values is given out simplyand clearly in the first scene — ‘fair is foul and foulis fair’; and with it are associated premonitions ofthe conflict, disorder and moral darkness intowhich Macbeth will plunge himself”. But thissituation was, to borrow the Viennese saying,“desperate but not serious”, since the disorder anddarkness were safely contained. “Well before theend of the first act,” Knights assures us, we are “inpossession” of those “positive values against whichthe Macbeth evil will be defined”.Knights writes as though these “positive values”are not only there “in” the play, as part of what weare to suppose people at that time all believed, ina world we have lost: they are also grounded inthe inherent structure of reality in the world weall inhabit.It is only in the last 50 years or so that criticshave seriously begun to challenge the sort ofpositive, providentialist view of Macbeth espousedby critics like Danby, Knights and, up to a point atleast, Peter Hall. In his pioneering 1963 essay on“The ‘Strong Pessimism’ of Macbeth”, WilburSanders protested against all those “readings ofMacbeth in which evil is somehow subordinated tothe good and to the natural, and the military12victory of Malcolm’s forces is seen as theelimination of the Macbeth-evil”: “this kindof simplification”, Sanders observed,“domesticates the play and draws its teeth”. Inanother, not so early but resonant 1980 essay thatwas reprinted in his magnificent collection MakingTrifles of Terrors, Harry Berger Jr. protested thatthe natural or even sacred “Order” that providedthe assumptive basis for providentialist readingswas not conspicuously present – or was nowhere tobe found – in the play’s opening scenes. ArthurKinney echoed this protest at the start of his bookLies Like Truth (2001).The opening scenes, after all, are capable of amuch more alarming interpretation thantraditional critics allow. Take the sinister coupletthat concludes the unforgettable but astonishinglybrief (15 line) first scene:Fair is foul, and foul is fair,Hover through the fog and filthy air –Providentialists take the witches’s words to meanthat we are about to witness a reversal or inversionof ordered Nature, where all we need to do, as inBen Jonson’s Volpone, is turn things the right wayup and order will be restored. But the morealarming possibility is that the witches aremocking or repudiating the very idea of someontological and moral difference between “fair”13

and “foul” – and suggesting there is no absolutedifference between them, indeed that there are noabsolute values at all.Moments earlier, the witches say they haddetermined to meet MacbethWhen the hurly-burly’s done,When the battle’s lost and won.Again, we can rationalize the reference to “Whenthe battle’s lost and won”: the winner’s victory willbe the opponent’s loss. But again there is another,more frightening possibility: that winning is reallyjust losing more slowly – an interpretation thatanticipates Macbeth’s final nihilistic vision of lifeitself as a tale “Told by an idiot”: “Full of soundSUPERNATURAL POWERSThe witches’ oracularpredictions to Macbethcome true, and of coursethey know where and whento find him. That some oftheir prophecies to Banquostill haven’t been confirmed14when the play endscontributes to theuneasiness in the final scene:where, Bertolt Brechtwanted to know, is Fleance?We expect prophecies andpredictions in works of art tocome true, like theSoothsayer’s prediction inJulius Caesar; that is usuallywhy they are there. So weshouldn’t conclude tooquickly that the WeirdSisters must be “real”witches, and therefore mustbe instruments of Satan, andand fury” but “Signifying nothing”. In thisinterpretation, the moral categories – Knights’s“positive values”, and all distinctions betweenfair and foul, or good and evil, or losing andwinning – threaten to disappear into the “fogand filthy air”.In the light of this, it is unsurprising thatLafew’s deeply sceptical remarks in All’s WellThat Ends Well about how fragile our assumptionsare and how little we know of the world have beencited more than once as appropriate to the moodof Macbeth:They say miracles are past; and we have ourphilosophical persons, to make modern andfamiliar, things supernatural and causeless.that the Christian God musttherefore be in his Heaven,so that all may soon be well.References to thesupernatural are morefrequent in Macbeth than inany other Shakespeare playexcept Julius Caesar.Banquo appeals to the“merciful powers” to“Restrain in me the cursèdthoughts that nature/ Givesway to in repose”; but hedoesn’t know how strongthese powers are, and he isafraid to go to sleep. LadyMacbeth appeals to the“spirits” that “tend on mortalthoughts” to “unsex mehere”, but we don’t knowwhether these spirits comewhen they are called; in thatcase the actress and directorhave to decide whether tosuggest that there is someimmediate, fataltranformation. In this play,the “powers” that appear tobe ranged against each otherin the opposed worlds of Dayand Night remainmysterious and uncertain. 15

Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors,ensconsing ourselves into seeming knowledge,when we should submit ourselves to anunknown fear.These words provided Wilbur Sanders with anepitaph for his essay “An unknown fear” and HarryBerger with the title for his book (Making Triflesof Terrors). Set Lafew’s humbling fear of how littlewe know – or Hamlet’s “There are more things inheaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of inour philosophy” – against Victor Hugo’s flatulentromantic optimism about why Napoleon’sdownfall was inevitable, and you have a prettygood idea of the gulf between modern andtraditional views of Macbeth.Nor is our attitude to the central character asstraightforward as many critics would have usbelieve. Although we witness his terribledegeneration, he is also the most sensitive andsympathetic character in the play. In L.C. Knights’sprovidentialist view, we “see through” Macbeth inmuch the same way that we see through aconfidence trickster, or a bad argument: hebecomes a tyrant who shrinks in stature during theplay. Yet we also “see through” him in quite adifferent sense, seeing his world through his eyes,through his asides and soliloquies, his torturedOpposite: poster for Orson Welles’s 1948 film16

sense that “Nothing is, but what is not” and – thishad better be said too –his sometimesastonishingly difficult language. For in a muchmore alarming way he actually grows in stature:the Macbeth we see in the earliest scenes is anervous wreck who becomes ever more fearless inthe fascinated way he watches and reports on hisown terrible inner transformation. As StephenBooth puts it in one of the finest discussions of thisplay, “to be audience to Macbeth is virtually to beMacbeth for the duration of the performance”.The tragedy, Booth suggests, occurs not so muchon stage as “in the audience”; Shakespeare makesus join our minds to Macbeth’s both in “his[Macbeth’s] sensitive awareness of evil and hispractice of it”.Despite the horror we feel for his increasinglymonstrous behaviour, we find ourselves forcedto admire as well as to condemn his extraordinaryvitality and daring. He is a force of nature and,as Wilbur Sanders suggests, his defiant energyrepresents, even exemplifies, something whichNietsche and D. H. Lawrence both took to bea vital and essential element of human existence.his conception of evil an awareness of dynamismand power.Sanders goes on to quote Henry V:There is some soul of goodness in things evilWould men observingly distil it out.Macbeth is an unsettling play. It is unsettling in theway we are made to see its central figure both as avillain who commits horrifying deeds but also as ahero who compels our admiration. And it isunsettling because it not only suggests that evil is astronger force than good but questions the wholeidea of some absolute standard of goodness againstwhich everything can be measured. Like KingLear, it confronts the possibility that we live in anunaccommodating universe where the very idea ofexternal “order” is an illusion. This is a play, toadapt the bleeding captain’s words in the secondscene, where “discomfort” keeps “swelling” fromevery “seeming comfort”, and the “multiplyingvillainies of Nature” seem omnipresent and readyto swarm through any breach.It is as if the Shakespeare who knew that themeek must, and do, inherit the earth, also sawfrom a different point of view (Nietzschean,Lawrencian) what a disaster it would be for theearth if they did, and preserved at the very core of1819

How does Shakespearecreate an atmosphere ofevil?What bears in on us in the opening scenes ofMacbeth is something terrifyingly inchoate. A. P.Rossiter, usually a scrupulously attentive critic,refers to the “breakdown of ordered nature” whichis “released by Duncan’s murder”, but what onearth does he mean? How can he speak of a“breakdown” which is only “released” in thesecond act, when the play (after its short prologue)starts with with the description of a bloody battle– described as “another Golgotha” (massacre) – inwhich Nature’s “multiplying villainies” are already“swarming”?And when, once Duncan’s murder has takenplace, Macbeth reflects that he might be better offdead, his miniature sketch of Duncan’s reignscarcely suggests that it was a period of peace andorder:After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well,Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,Can touch him further. [3.2]What is so disturbing about Act One is not thesense of evil events disrupting a stable, morally20clear world but the absence of any such world. Theatmosphere of the opening scenes is one ofcontinual “Hurly-burly”, where “fair is foule andfoule is fair” – words spoken by the witches andthen eerily echoed by Macbeth when he firstappears. As Arthur Kinney points out in Lies LikeTruth, the first four scenes all begin with questions:“When shall we three meete again?”; “Whatbloody man is that?”; “Where has thou beene,sister?”; “Is execution done on Cawdor?” and theplay thereafter resounds with questions: “If weshould faile?”; “Is this a Dagger, which I see beforeme ?”; ”But wherefore could I not pronounceAmen?”The questions help establish the play’sunsettling atmosphere, as do the tales and acts ofviolence, threats, hallucinations, charms,conjurations and secret plotting. Macbeth is a“play of conspiracies”, says Kinney; from the firstscene when the witches conspire with each otherwe have one conspiracy after another:of Macbeth and the witches with their foreseentitles; of Macbeth and his wife; of Macbeth andBanquo complicit in silence; of Macbeth andLennox, who supports his story at the discovery insilence; of Macbeth and Ross as he interrogatesothers and discovers Macduff’s flight.The play is full, too, of rumours and mysteries.21

“Surprise is continual,” writes G. Wilson Knight:Macbeth does not understand how he can beThane of Cawdor (1.3). Lady Macbeth is startledat the news of Duncan’s visit (1.5); Duncan at thefact of Macbeth’s arrival before himself (1.6).There is the general amazement at the murder; ofLennox, Ross and the Old Man at the strangehappenings in earth and heaven on the night ofthe murder (2.3; 2.4). Banquo and Fleance areunsure of the hour (2.1). No one is sure ofMacduff’s mysterious movements. Lady Macbethis baffled by Macbeth’s enigmatic hints as to the“deed of dreadful note” (3.2). The two murderersare not certain as to whom has wronged them,Macbeth or Banquo (3.1); they do not understandthe advent of the “third murderer” (3.3). Rossand Lady Macduff are at a loss as to Macduff’sflight, and warning is brought to Lady Macduff bya mysterious messenger who “is not by herknown” (4.2). Malcolm suspects Macduff,and there is a long dialogue due to his “doubts”(4.3); and in the same scene Malcolm recognizesRoss as his countryman yet strangely “knowshim not” (4.3).The questions and the mysteries reinforce thesense of a lack of order and the contradictoryimpressions the play produces in us which makeus feel that22.we feare, yet know not what we feare,But floate upon a wilde and violent SeaEach way, and none. [4.2]Following the witches on the heath, the play’ssecond scene gives us our first real sense of thesituation from which the play’s events will unfold.We hear from the Captain his description of thebattle in which Macbeth fights Macdonwald. The“brave” and (for now) good Macbeth defeats andkills the “mercilesse” and bad Macdonwald, but, ashas often been remarked, the Captain’s descriptionof a “doubtful” conflict between “two spentSwimmers” who “cling together,/And choake theirArt” makes the two men seem indistinguishable,while the Captain’s attempt to provide adistinction by calling one “mercilesse” and theother “brave” is itself exposed by theinterchangeability of the adjectives: it is hard tothink the unseamer more merciful than the manhe unseams.Doubtful it stood,As two spent swimmers that do cling togetherAnd choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald(Worthy to be a rebel, for to thatThe multiplying villainies of natureDo swarm upon him) from the Western IslesOf kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;And Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,23

Showed like a rebel’s whore. But all’s too weak:For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name),Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel,Which smoked with bloody execution,Like valor’s minion carved out his passageTill he faced the slave;Which ne’er shook hands nor bade farewell tohimTill he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chopsAnd fixed his head upon our battlements. [1.2]As the American critic Stephen Booth has pointedout in a brilliant analysis of this speech in KingLear, Macbeth, Indefinition and Tragedy, Macbethcomes across as “impersonal, ruthless andviolent”; he may be “the defender of right” but hesounds “more a monster of cruelty thanMacdonwald does”. Throughout the Captain’snarrative, indeed, “the doers of good sound eitherlike or worse than the evildoers”. And what is trueof the Captain’s narrative is true of the play as awhole: the sense of evil always seems muchstronger to us than the sense of good. The outcomeof the “doubtful” conflicts described appears todepend on chance and Macbeth’s Might, not onRight, or any providential power.Is Macbeth the plaything ofa giant malevolence?The first mystery in this play full of mysteriesis, of course, the nature of the witches. Who arethey? Are they natural or supernatural, real orimaginary? In a sense, as Stephen Booth observes,they are more real to us than anyone else in theplay because they are the first characters we meet.In effect, we see all the subsequent action throughtheir prophecies to Macbeth (that he will becomeThane of Cawdor, then King of Scotland) andBanquo (that his children will become kings).In trying to understand who they are,Banquo’s amazed response when he first seesthem is important:What are these,So withered, and so wild in their attire,That look not like th’inhabitants o’th’earthAnd yet are on’t? [1.3]Banquo then addresses and questions the strangecreatures, while providing further descriptivedetails:Live you, or are you aughtThat man may question? You seem tounderstand me,2425

By each at once her choppy finger layingUpon her skinny lips. You should be women,And yet your beards forbid me to interpretThat you are so.Macbeth himself then asks, more crisply: “Speakif you can: what are you?” In the period after theRestoration when the witches were routinelytrivialised and often wore conical hats, thisquestion would have seemed stupid rather thantroubled. But Shakespeare’s witches are moremysterious, more frighteningly ambivalent.As the respected actor, director, critic anddramatist Harley Granville-Barker noted in hisPrefaces to Shakespeare (1927-54), the witchesare never actually called witches in the play.They are called the Weird Sisters. A.C. Bradleyalways referred to them as witches, though heinsisted that they are not, “in any sense whatever,supernatural beings”: “They are old women,poor and ragged, skinny and hideous, full ofvulgar spite, occupied in killing their neighbours’swine or revenging themselves on sailors’ wiveswho have refused them chestnuts”, althoughthey are also “instruments of darkness” who“have received from evil spirits certainsupernatural powers”.Many contemporary critics, however,prefer to follow Granville-Barker – and theplay – by calling them the Weird Sisters, and26A.D. Nuttall explained why in his last book,Shakespeare the Thinker (2007):Weird or wyrd in Old English means “fate.” Thesisters are three in number like the classicalFates [or “Parcae”]. At the same time they arewitches, a relatively familiar feature of the ruralsocial scene.In the village on the Welsh border where I livedas a child we had a “cunning woman” who hadspells and simples, written out in a HerefordshireCountry Council school exercise book, for curingvarious ailments, animal or human. Thecommunity never rose against her, but one couldimagine it happening (should a cow die, say, afterPERSECUTINGWITCHES“Thou shalt not suffer awitch to live” (Exodus,22.18): the Bible tells us notonly that witches exist, butthat they must be hunteddown and destroyed. Andyet, in the so-called DarkAges, this clear Biblicalinjunction was neglected. Inthe eighth century StBoniface went so far as todeclare that it wasunChristian to believe inwitches or werewolves, andthe Emperor Charlemagneordered that those who burntwitches should be put todeath themselves. StAgeland’s ruling, in the ninthcentury, that anybody whobelieved in witches was“beyond doubt an infidel anda pagan” entered canon lawin the Canon Episcopi or27

Nuttall writes wonderfully of what he calls the“primitive, twilit stuff” in Macbeth, and thatmight remind us of one way in which the playrepresented a new departure. With the exceptionof King Lear, the recently preceding plays –including the “problem” comedies – presentedhighly evolved, sometimes “over-ripe” societies,while Macbeth presents a historically primitive,11th-century world.The identity of the witches in this primitiveworld is never clear. If they are instruments ofSatan – as Banquo supposes when he exclaims, aftertheir first prophesy is fulfilled: “What, can the devilspeak true?”– then this suggests that the world ofthe play is a Christian one, but as Nuttall suggests,they seem curiously capricious and infantilefor traditional witches – hardly less concernedwith the pilots and chestnuts they discuss in thethird scene than with Macbeth and Scotland.Yet precisely what the witches are and arenot – a question which can never be resolved – isless interesting than why they are there, and whatthey and their predictions tell us about Macbeth,and about the nature of nature, or reality – apreoccupation which is closely bound up, in theplay, with the question of free will.Is Macbeth a free agent, or is he from the veryCapitulum Episcopi.Burning witches wasexpressly forbidden. Themany murderous outbreaksand burnings, when witcheswere scapegoated as well asJews, remained local affairsnot a divinely ordained duty.This changed when the Ageof Enlightenment finallydawned.In 1484 Pope InnocentVIII’s Witch Bull providedDominican monks andinquisitors with the generalmandate they longed for.widespread belief in witches.At one end of the spectrumwere illiterate andsuperstitious villagers: somepoor farmer whose only cowhad suddenly died or whowas impotent on his weddin

final prophecy, and become King. When Duncan arrives to stay at the Macbeths' castle at Inverness, Lady Macbeth hatches a plan to murder him and secure the throne for her husband. Macbeth agonises, but Lady Macbeth eventually persuades him. Act Two Macbeth hallucinates before entering Duncan's quarters to commit the murder, believing he sees a