There had been a rebellion in Scotland. A commander called Macbeth is on his way home from putting it down. A man called Banquo walks beside him.
The day was foul and the fog was thick. Macbeth says the first line. So foul and fair a day, he says, he has never seen.
There is one thing he does not know. In the play’s very first scene, three figures said the same thing. Fair is foul, they said, and foul is fair.
The Three on the Heath
Three figures were standing in the road. It was not clear whether they were people at all. Banquo says they look as if the earth had put them up.
They call Macbeth three times. Thane of Glamis, thane of Cawdor, and king that shall be. Macbeth cannot say anything.
Banquo asks them to speak to him too. What they give him is something like a riddle. Lesser than Macbeth, they say, and greater. Not a king, but the father of kings.
Macbeth catches at them to say more. They give no answer and vanish. The two men are left in the fog.
True at Once
The king’s men arrive just then. They bring word of what the king has decided. The title of the thane of Cawdor, who joined the rebellion, is Macbeth’s now.
One of the three things came true where he stood. Macbeth goes quiet at the news. And he begins to speak in words only the audience hears.
Banquo says something different. The instruments of darkness, he says, win us with small truths to do us harm. He knows the words came true and he stops there. The two men’s roads part at that spot.
If Chance Will Have Me
Macbeth notices what is moving inside him. He has done nothing yet and his heart is already knocking. He steadies himself and says this.
“If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, Without my stir.” (Act 1, Scene 3)
The line says that he will do nothing. And saying it at all is already doing something. A man with no such thought has nothing to steady himself about.
The King Names His Son
King Duncan receives the two of them with great praise. And then he announces one thing. His son Malcolm is named to come after him.
Macbeth turns to the audience again. That son, he says, is a step lying in his way. He must go over it or stop there. He tells the stars to hide their fires.
The king says he will stay a few nights at Macbeth’s castle. Macbeth rides ahead to carry the news home first.
The Woman Who Reads the Letter
Lady Macbeth is reading her husband’s letter. What happened on the heath is written out in it. She finishes reading and arrives at the conclusion at once.
What worried her was not that the prophecy might be wrong. It was that her husband was too soft to do it. He wants the place, she says, and would rather avoid the road.
Word comes that the king arrives tonight. She asks that everything gentle be taken out of her. And when her husband comes she tells him what his face must do. Look like the flower, she says, and be the serpent under it.
The Guest Coming to the Castle
Duncan reaches the castle. He looks about him and says the air is sweet here. Where swallows build under the eaves, he says, the place is a good one.
The man saying this dies in this castle tonight. The audience can guess it and he cannot. Lady Macbeth comes out and receives him graciously.
Today, What Words Do Inside Us
What the three said on the heath is short. What it does inside Macbeth is long. From then on he starts fitting the world to those words.
One other man heard the same thing. Banquo knows it came true and stops. So it is hard to say simply that the words moved the man. What differed was the place the words landed in.
Things said about us do sometimes come true as they were said. That can be called prophecy, or it can be called the result of believing it. This play follows a man collapsing between those two names, all the way down.
In the next chapter that night comes. There is a guest asleep in the castle, and outside, somebody begins knocking at the gate.