Macbeth begins with spectacle. Just as movie audiences today may find elaborate special effects to be thrilling and exciting, so too did Renaissance theater audiences enjoy the stage effects that would accompany certain performances. Shakespeare immediately brings his audience into the supernatural world. Plays would be performed on a mostly bare stage during the daytime. However, to create the proper mood, musical instruments and other devices were used. In this scene, three witches are on stage during a severe storm. To create the sound of thunder and other storm noises, the musicians could bang on large kettle drums or rattle thin sheets of metal. The plays were also performed on a raised platform. From underneath that platform, a stagehand could create smoke of some kind and send it through a hole in the floor. The stage would thus be filled with smoke or haze, as if a mist had covered the ground. Such simple effects would be more than sufficient to establish the eerie atmosphere necessary for the scene.
The first scene of the play is extremely short: only eleven lines long. Yet it is extremely crucial not only in providing the supernatural atmosphere of the play, but also in establishing two thematic concepts.
Three witches are standing in the open during a storm, and one of them asks when they shall meet again. Another witch responds that they will meet “when the hurly-burly’s done” (line 3). The expression hurly-burly refers both (1) to the storm and (2) to the battle that is taking place. The country of Scotland is actually at war with two enemies: (1) a band of Scottish rebels led by a man named Macdonald and (2) the country of Norway.
The significant lines are the ones where the witches correctly predict that the battle will be done by sunset (line 5) and that they will encounter the Scottish hero Macbeth on the heath (line 7: heath – an open and wild piece of land). The witches are able to see the future and, as will happen later in the play, can also affect future events. For this reason, they could be said to symbolize fate. Throughout just about every single work that Shakespeare wrote, fate plays an extremely important role. Shakespeare clearly believed that there was a supernatural force beyond the understanding and control of mankind that shaped and controlled the destinies of everyone. In this regard, Shakespeare was opposed to the philosophy of the Humanists, who believed that man could shape his own destiny by the power of his own mind. Readers should always pay special attention when Shakespeare uses the word fate or one of its synonyms, especially destiny, chance, and fortune. At the end of the scene the witches chant together, “fair is foul, and foul is fair” (line 10). The