William Shakespeare, the world-renowned English author, playwright and actor, has written The Tragedy of Macbeth, which is generally regarded as both the best writer in the English language and the finest dramatist in the world. Macbeth was composed, between 1599-1606. The play is set mostly in Scotland, and follows Macbeth's character, a Northern Irish general who is greedy for power and demented by political ambition. Shakespeare beautifully depicts the downward spiral of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as they contend with greed's devastating physical and psychological consequences.
Macbeth's opening scene sets the narrative and tone for the whole drama. It has the three witches on a battleground contemplating their reconciliation to exploit the returned hero of war, Macbeth. By foretelling between good and bad, they reveal their intention to cause much doubt and chaos in his life.
The setting itself is gloomy with clouds of thunder and heavy winds. It generates an environment of terror, mistrust and misfortune which by the following actions continues. The vocabulary implied by fair and foul and a surface of fog surrounding them introduces the viewer to the core theme of the drama that is the dark product of political power envy and vain desire.
In particular, the opening scene is crucial for building a mood or environment in which the viewer can see the main action of the play. The weather is not favorable, but rather aggressive to citizens, the most nasty. In a desert place, with thunder and lightning, the fog and dirty weather signifies the universal gloom and unhealthiness and the presence of the witches symbolizes a desolate place where evil runs wild to achieve its mastery over all life. Not only does the storm harmonize in its gruesome guise and rituals at its worst, it is also a sign of the current convulsion in the Kingdom of Duncan and of the much greater convulsion to come-a parallel to the hurry-burly of fight and murder. The second scene is corrupted by the background of the case. In the opening scene, the normal exposition is avoided-the action is introduced in a symbolic way, and explodes into wild life at once. Therefore, the curiosity of the viewer in the activities to follow is stimulated accordingly.
In the first scene, the main theme of the reversal of principles is given out plainly and clearly: 'Fair is foul and foul is fair', and the premonitions of the war, chaos and spiritual darkness into which Macbeth would most certainly plunge himself are connected with it. In the cryptic language of the witches, there is also an additional and worst sense underlying the obviousness.
In the breast of Macbeth, the witches see their crop, where it finds a soil prepared by its own inherent design, inclined to evil, to make it fertile, and to taste the bitter fruit. In a way, the witches act as the breathing instruments of Destiny to bring doom to Macbeth's life. The oncoming of evil in the world is what is more striking. Evil is all pervading when it enters the world surreptitiously and enters evil well. It acts as a toxin that threatens all the healthy stuff in life. Thus, since the witches are a dark threat to ordinary goodness, the first scene mostly appears to be a foreboding. The witches tell you that when the 'hurly burly' is over, they'll meet Macbeth. The chaos in the spiritual universe in which good and evil stand crisis-cross and sometimes evil engulf the good, thereby leading to moral instability in the world, rather than the turmoil of war and rebelliousness in the word.
The speech of Witches intensifies a sense of incantation and supernatural charms through its use of rhyme, not just in the first scene but also in the play. Line four and line nine 'Fair is foul and foul is fair' deliver a peculiar paradox as the fight is lost and won. 'Lost' and 'Win',' foul' and 'fair' are antonyms, and the dichotomy and the dramatic absurdity lie there. The witches are the airy-nothing and nothing is likely to know the future with the airy-nothing. Awareness of the future/ Foretelling means supplying the play with the components of supernaturalism. In addition, the witches have one craft that they not only have the ability to grasp but to mold the future in order to work disaster.
In the two main characters of the play, Macbeth's main theme, the devastation inflicted when desire goes unchecked by moral limits, finds its most strong voice. Macbeth is a courageous Scottish general who though he strongly desires strength and progress, is not instinctively inclined to do evil deeds. To his best judgement, he kills Duncan and stews in remorse and fear afterwards. He descends into a sort of frantic, boastful hysteria at the end of the play. In the other hand, Lady Macbeth pursues her ambitions with more resolve, but she is less able to bear the consequences of her unethical actions She spurs her husband mercilessly to kill Duncan and encourages him to be brave in the wake of the assassination, one of Shakespeare's most forcefully drawn female characters, but she is ultimately pushed to distraction by the influence of Macbeth's repeated bloodshed on her conscience.
In every case, ambition, aided, of course, by the witches' malign prophecies, is what drives the pair to increasingly dreadful massacres. The dilemma created by the foretelling of the witches in the play suggests, is that it is hard to avoid if one chooses to use violence to advance one's search for power. The throne is always subject to future threats—Banquo, Fleance, Macduff—and it is always tempting to use offensive means to dispose of them.
Thus, there are many dramatic purposes for the brief and crisp opening scene of Macbeth. It adds the dark atmosphere, combines the super-natural aspects into the action, and gives the foreground awareness of the convergence of good and bad by Foretelling the future. Of all the best it does is to help the instruction of man's spiritual understanding that whatever his sterling values, man does not hold to moral goodness. The strong reality in the scene is that bad is over-mastering.
