In his archetypal, tragic play, Macbeth, Shakespeare illustrates the eponymous character’s descent into the depths of depravity through the heinous crimes of murder, regicide and treason. Shakespeare sets the role of the witches not only to flatter the king James I (who was fascinated by witchcraft), but also to embody the temptation which ultimately catalyses Macbeth’s downfall and condemnation as a “dead butcher.” Simultaneously, Shakespeare portrays the scepticism that the witches should invoke through the character of Banquo, which ultimately serves as a mechanism to shed light on Macbeth’s moral inferiority. This extract from Act I Scene 3, Shakespeare conveys Banquo’s perceptive understanding that the witches in fact evil creatures of Hell, a view that most of the Shakespearean audience would associate with. Banquo warns Macbeth that “the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles”, and the noun “instruments” to describe the witches implies performance, possibly suggesting pretense on their part. This also conveys how they are evil forces as they are doing the bidding of “darkness.” This noun is ambiguous by nature, suggesting that the evil forces are multilateral and can present themselves in many different ways. Furthermore, the dental alliteration of “tell us truths” is harsh-sounding when spoken on stage, therefore Shakespeare’s use of sound here is evocative of a cynical attitude from Banquo towards the witches. Moreover, the oxymoronic description of the “honest trifles” that the witches prophesied indicates Banquo’s view that the witches are deceitful, as they try to trick people with partial truths. The duplicity that the oxymoron presents encapsulates this, therefore revealing Banquo’s ultimate belief that the witches only deceive and betray. Conversely, Macbeth is presented by Shakespeare as possessed by the allure that the witches promise. He reflects on all the “happy prologues to the swelling act of the imperial theme”, as rather than seeing the prophecies of being Glamis and Cawdor as “trifles” used to trick him, as Banquo does, he sees them as a build-up, conveyed by the metaphorical description of these two truths as prologues. It is through this that Shakespeare is able to capture Banquo as a foil to Macbeth, as Banquo can see the truth, whilst Macbeth is entranced and blinded by his ambition and temptation that the prophecies of the witches induce. Shakespeare expresses this idea of the witches being in control of Macbeth right from the start of the play, through their paradoxical mantra that “fair is foul.” The reliance on oxymoron combined with the use of choral speaking serve to create an unsettling, prophetic mantra when spoken aloud, whilst the harsh sounds simultaneously illustrate their evil nature. As well as this, the chiasmic structure adds to a sense of determinism, as though they are in complete control of Macbeth. The oxymoronic juxtaposition of “fair” and “foul” is also riddling, therefore this perhaps supports Banquo’s cynical attitude to the witches, since they speak only in equivocations. Ultimately, this line appeals to the condemnation of witches in the Jacobean society, especially as King James I wrote a book about witches entitled Daemonologie, which linked them to Satan and evil forces. Simultaneously, the supernatural acts as a trigger for Macbeth’s downfall, as Macbeth (before even having met the witches) remarks how he has never seen “so fair and foul a day”, echoing the dichotomy of the witches and inexplicably linking his fate with their words. Therefore this chant perhaps reveals that Macbeth’s captured attitude to the witches is not a fault of his own but in fact a result of the supernatural control that the supernatural holds over fate, whilst also aligning with the widespread Jacobean condemnation and fear of witches and supernatural forces. However, to a modern audience, Macbeth is arguably in control of his own fate, but is led astray by these supernatural forces who tempt him and catalyse his condemnation. In a soliloquy in Act I Scene 7, Macbeth reflects on his “vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself and falls on th’other”, and this equestrian metaphor highlights a sense of momentum stemming from Macbeth’s ambition, emphasised by Shakespeare’s use of enjambement. The adjective “vaulting” almost personifies Macbeth’s ambition as a force with an agenda. Therefore, perhaps Shakespeare intended to show Macbeth’s ambition as the real driving force, as the supernatural only takes this ambition and twists it into a murderous force of evil. This is shown through Macbeth’s vision of a weapon floating before his eyes, encouraging him to murder Duncan - “is this a dagger I see before me, the handle towards my hand?” The “dagger” is symbolic of the murder and regicide which Macbeth follows as a “dead butcher”, therefore the way that the supernatural vision positions the “handle towards [his] hand” suggests that it is encouraging him to take on this violent persona. The use of two nouns with the same root (“handle” “hand”) suggests determinism, as the supernatural forces take the ”horrid image” of murder that Macbeth’s ambition forms in his mind in Act I Scene 3 and turns it into a tangible-seeming dagger. However, the ambiguity is from the question mark that ends this phrase; this makes it unclear whether the tempting dagger is a real symbol or a hallucination. To a Jacobean audience, the dagger is unquestionably real due to the supernatural beliefs engrained in their society, however a modern audience may be more inclined to view the dagger as a hallucination, a creation of Macbeth’s ambitious yet vulnerable state of mind. This then begs the question whether the supernatural forces in the play as a whole are real or if even the “weird sisters” are simply a manifestation of Macbeth’s fatal ambition, externalising his thoughts to help place the blame of temptation on supernatural forces. Therefore, in this play, Shakespeare questions the origins of temptation through his presentation of Banquo and Macbeth. As a foil, Banquo shuns the witches in complete contrast to Macbeth’s captured temptation for the allure of the promises of the witches.