Witches And Prophecies In Macbeth

Witches, and Prophecies? That sounds like the inner workings of a childs whimsical imagination, but in this case, a power-hungry leader named Macbeth creates theses illusions through the use of his overwhelming imagination. In the dramatic play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Macbeth’s imagination consumes him and causes him to perform horrible crimes in order to become successful. Witches visit Macbeth in the woods and they communicated a prophecy to him. The prophecy they give to him indicated great power in Macbeth’s future. At first Macbeth is sceptical, but then more and more he starts to believe in his own imagination. Through the influence of the witches and the prophecies on Macbeth’s decisions, it is clear that it is Macbeth’s …show more content…
When the witches speak to macbeth in the woods they tell him, “All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!/All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!/All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter!”(Shakespeare I.iii) At this time, Macbeth is the Thane of Glamis, but the witches predict that soon Macbeth will become King. When Macbeth first hears it, he has doubts, but his wife, Lady Macbeth, fully believes in the prophecy. It is her interest that sparks Macbeths imagination to take drastic action in order to secure the power that was foreshadowed by the witches. It is these prophecies that victimises Macbeth because they lead him to believe in his imagination, that his future was predetermined. This leaves Macbeth to believe that if he were to become king in the future, there is no better time than right now. This gives Macbeth the justification he needs in order to go through with the crimes and his imagination is simply the spark that lights the flame. Banquo also accompanied Macbeth when they first met the witches. This witches told Banquo “Hail!/Lesser than Macbeth, and greater./Not so happy, yet much happier./Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.”(Shakespeare I.iii) …show more content…
If it was ambition that victimised Macbeth he would not have had to justify his crimes to himself. There would be no need to imagine the witches or go to the witches a second time, in order to justify something that was truly evil. Ambition has a positive connotation to it. However, Macbeth is responsible for horrible crimes. Even Macbeth deep down knows that he has done wrong, “smoke of hell that my knife see not the wound it makes/nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark.” when Shakespeare says “nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark.” The literal darkness represents all the bad he has done. In this, Macbeth shares a similarity with when Lady Macbeth descends into his madness, she insists on always having a candle or, "light about her”(Shakespeare III.iii) as if the light might protect her against the evil forces she herself has summonsed. She is so paranoid because of the bad deeds that her and her husband have done. This means they have done something morally wrong which contradicts with the positive connotation with ambition. Therefore it could not be ambition that drives Macbeth. Also, Lisa Low stated that “His conscience acted through his imagination to tell him he had murdered sleep and would sleep no more. All he could see or think of was blood.” This suggests the point that it was macbeths imagination that performed tricks on his mind. These tricks caused macbeth to act