The supernatural in hamlet and macbeth

Supernatural appearances in Macbeth
 
Just as with Hamlet, the supernatural appears from the very beginning of the action of Macbeth and, even more than in Hamlet, it sets the tone and atmosphere for the whole play. But while in Hamlet it takes just one form, the Ghost, in Macbeth it takes several. The three Weird Sisters are by far the most prominent, and I will be concentrating on them. But there is also the dagger floating in the air that appears to Macbeth just before he enters King Duncan’s bedchamber to murder him (II.1.33-44); there is the voice that cries to Macbeth: “Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep” (II.2.38-39); and there is the ghost of the murdered Banquo that appears to Macbeth at the banquet in III.4, but to no one else. As with the ghost of King Hamlet that appears to Hamlet in the boudoir scene but not to his mother, it is possible to argue that the floating dagger, the voice out of the dark, and Banquo’s ghost are not real but hallucinations, products of Macbeth’s overactive imagination and guilty conscience. But as with the Ghost of the opening scenes of Hamlet, the Weird Sisters, who are seen and spoken to by Banquo and Macbeth and are known to the world for their “more than mortal knowledge” (as Macbeth’s letter to Lady Macbeth shows), are really and truly there.
If the Hecate‘s scene is not counted (III.5), which most scholars agree was written into the play by someone else than Shakespeare, the Sisters are in just three scenes of Macbeth, I.1, I.3, and IV.1, they speak altogether just sixty-three lines out of the play’s total of two thousand. (Macbeth is by far the shortest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, is half the length of Hamlet, and except for The Comedy of Errors is the shortest of all of Shakespeare’s plays [Orgel, xxx].) Yet it is impossible to think of Macbeth without thinking of them.
They are the first characters on stage in the play. Even before they speak, the audience recognizes that they are not good witches because it is storming, with “thunder and lightning” (stage direction, I.1.1), and when they do speak they speak of cats (“I come, Graymalkin!” [9]) and toads (“Paddock calls” [10]) and of “fog and filthy air” (13), all of which are associated with black magic. Their entrance and exit from Shakespeare’s stage, which did not make use of a curtain, was probably under the cover of some special-effect smoke device (Banquo: “Whither are they vanished?” Macbeth: “Into the air, and what seemed corporal melted / As breath into the wind” [I.3.80-82]), so that they would appear much more spooky to an audience that had a stronger belief in witches than theatregoers do today. What the audience is not aware of at the moment but will come to appreciate by the end of the play is that what all three Sisters chorus as they seemingly vanish into the air, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” (12), sums up what Macbeth is about to experience in the next five acts, very much to his grief.
Act I, Scene 3 opens on a wild and wasted landscape, what Macbeth later in the scene calls “this blasted heath” (77), and, like every other appearance of the Sisters, with “thunder.” We know that scenery was not used in Shakespeare’s theatre, but still it is a set worthy of Hollywood. Once again it is only the three Witches on stage. They make themselves seem that much more frightful by talking of how they will cruelly punish the sailor-husband of a woman who had been rude to one of them. The punishment they are planning, loss of sleep, is what Macbeth will later suffer owing to his guilty conscience. A reader cannot help wondering why the Sisters do not simply punish the woman who committed the offense rather than her husband. If their evil power can reach from Scotland to Aleppo in Syria, where the sailor-husband has gone, and if, as they claim, they can control the winds, it seems a bit strange that they should not be able to get even with the offender directly and without delay.
Just as the First Witch gruesomely takes out “a pilot’s thumb” to show to the others, and as the three of them chant a spell that turns on the magical number three (Macbeth is full of threes), Macbeth and Banquo enter. They are coming directly from the bloody battlefield (Macbeth is also full of blood) and are on their way to King Duncan’s camp after their double victory over the invading Norwegians and the Scottish rebels led by the traitorous Thane of Cawdor. Their meeting with the Witches is not a coincidence, at least not for the Witches, since in Scene 1 the Witches have spoken of its taking place “ere the set of sun” (I.1.5). 
Macbeth’s first words in the play echo the Witches’ Scene 1 chant: “So foul and fair a day I have not seen” (I.3.38). Banquo’s first words are in the form of questions. He is startled by the Witches’ sudden presence and by their strange and unnatural appearance:
What are these,
So withered and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th’ inhabitants o’ th’ earth
And yet are on’t?
(I.3.39-42)
He remarks on the “choppy finger” and “skinny lips” of each and on the “beards” that make their gender seem uncertain, all of which must have been the conventional features of bad witches in Shakespeare’s time as much as they are today. In fact, it could be that the popularity of Macbeth for four hundred years has done a lot to make these features conventional today.
Macbeth‘s command is : “Speak, if you can. What are you?” (47). Instead of answering his question, the Witches in turn “hail” him by the title he presently has (Thane or Lord of Glamis) and by the title which the audience knows, but which Macbeth does not yet know, has just been given to him in his absence by King Duncan (Thane of Cawdor). The Third Witch then hails Macbeth, “that shalt be king hereafter!” (48-50). It is clearly this prophecy that causes Macbeth to “start” and betray the guilty uneasiness which Banquo remarks on:

Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear

Things that do sound so fair?
(51-52)
The alarm Macbeth expresses when he hears the Witch’s prophecy and that Banquo finds puzzling suggests that even before this meeting with the Weird Sisters, before, the play began, he had allowed himself to think wicked thoughts of becoming king one day. He “starts” and “seems to fear” because it seems to him that the Witch has, by some magical means or other, read his guilty mind.
A few lines earlier (39-43), Banquo wondered out loud whether the Witches were “inhabitants o’ th’ earth” or supernatural beings, whether they were living or not. Now he questions them directly--are they real or hallucinations? (52-54)--and then, without waiting for an answer which he never gets, demands that they prophesy for himself as they have just hopefully prophesied for his “noble partner” (54). The openness of his manner and evenness of his voice--”Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear / Your favors nor your hate” (59-60)--stand out in contrast to Macbeth’s nervous demand and guilty start.
The Witches reply to Banquo’s frank demand first by hailing him one after the other and then, in turn as with Macbeth, by giving out a series of prophecies. Unlike the ones they have just given Macbeth, these prophecies are not explicit and are as much riddles as prophecies. Banquo will be “Lesser than Macbeth, and greater”; he will be “Not so happy, yet much happier”; he will beget kings though will not be one himself (65-67). They round out their prophesying by again hailing “Macbeth and Banquo! / Banquo and Macbeth!” (68-69), and without answering Macbeth’s urgent questions concerning the source of their prophetic knowledge or “why / Upon this blasted heath you stop our way / With such prophetic greeting” (76-78), they “vanish.”
There is a long gap before the Weird Sisters next appear on stage, in IV.1 (again not counting the Hecate scene, III.5), just as there is a long space between the appearance of King Hamlet’s ghost in Act I of Hamlet and its reappearance in Act III. But that does not mean that they and their prophecies disappear from dramatic sight. The next scene, I.5, opens with Lady Macbeth reading out loud the letter her husband has sent her in which he describes his meeting with the Witches and their prophecies. He says that he has received thoroughly reliable information that “they have more in them than mortal knowledge” (2-3). This, even if it is true, does not necessarily mean that the Sisters are themselves “more than mortal.” But Macbeth goes on to describe how, “When I burned to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished” (3-5) and this does sound supernatural, “manifesting some agency above the forces of nature” (Concise Oxford Dictionary). Since Shakespeare gives no hint that the Witches got their information in a rationally explainable way, their greeting Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor also strongly suggests supernatural agency. Macbeth and Banquo are certainly both convinced that the Witches’ “soliciting” is “supernatural” (I.3.130).
The next two times the Weird Sisters are mentioned before they reappear in IV.1 is when they are spoken of by Banquo. What he says shows clearly that meeting with them has left just as deep an impression on his mind as it has on Macbeth’s. The difference is maybe only that Banquo’s mind was not stained beforehand in a way that Macbeth’s was. In II.1, at Macbeth’s castle of Inverness where Duncan is staying the night he is murdered, before going to bed, Banquo acknowledges that he is struggling to suppress the “cursed thoughts” (9) that the Witches’ predictions have inspired in him. What these cursed thoughts are, the audience can easily guess
. When Macbeth joins him, Banquo remarks, “I dreamt last night of the three Weird Sisters,” and pointedly observes that part of their prophecies concerning Macbeth have come true (21-22). In reply, Macbeth tries to make it sound as though “I think not of them,” but nevertheless suggests that the two of them get together some time to talk over “that business” (22-25). He uses code language to further suggest that Banquo will have much to gain if he supports his (Macbeth’s) interests at the right time (26-27). Banquo’s reply shows that he is prepared to go along, but also shows that he has doubts about the honesty of Macbeth’s intentions, doubts he had expressed as early as I.4.121-122 (“That, trusted home, / Might yet enkindle you unto the crown”). He was, after all, a witness to “shalt be king hereafter,” and he knows enough about his fellow general’s character to suspect it. The Witches’ prophecies may have taken as deep hold of his mind as they have of Macbeth’s, he may even be almost as tempted as Macbeth is to act in order to fulfil them, but his strength of character is greater than Macbeth’s (Macbeth later speaks of “his royalty of nature” [III.1.50]) and he will not overstep the line of loyalty and honor. His refusal is by itself a persuasive argument against the view that the Witches and their prophecies determine the events of the play.
The second time the Witches are spoken of before their reappearance is in III.1. Duncan has been murdered by Macbeth and Macbeth has been crowned king of Scotland. Banquo, who is the only person besides Lady Macbeth who knows of the Witches’ prophecies and how they affected Macbeth, reflects on how they have now all been fulfilled and voices a strong suspicion of foul play:

Thou hast it now--king Cawdor, Glamis, all,

As the weird women promised; and I fear
Thou play’dst most foully for’t.
(III.1.1-3)
At the same time, he sees in the fulfilment of the prophecies some hopes for himself: if what the Sisters predicted about Macbeth has come true, there is reason to believe that what they predicted about him, “that myself should be the root and father / Of many kings” (5-6), will also come true. Banquo’s thoughts have not been spoiled the way Macbeth’s were, but they certainly have been stimulated. It is part of Shakespeare’s art to be able to dramatize Banquo’s conflicting feelings at this point so convincingly and so economically.
Macbeth’s first meeting with the Witches was arranged by them; he arranges the second meeting (IV.1). At this point, he has two murders on his conscience, Duncan’s and Banquo’s; he has learned that Banquo’s son Fleance escaped safely from the murderers who killed his father, so that the Witches’ prophecy to Banquo, “Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none” (I.3.67), can still come true; he has been deeply shaken by the appearance at his court banquet, to him only, of Banquo’s bloody ghost; he is aware that people suspect him of having murdered Duncan and of being behind the murder of Banquo (III.6); and he is also aware that resistance to his tyrannical rule is beginning to build, led by Macduff, so that he has found it necessary to plant paid spies in every Scottish nobleman’s household (III.4.132-133). He is growing desperate; as he himself says, he is gone so far in blood that there is no turning back (III.4.137-139). He is determined now to seek out the Weird Sisters in order to learn “By the worst means the worst” that the future holds (III.4.133-136).
It is completely in character for Macbeth to want to face his reality head-on like this. Not only has the audience known from the very beginning of the play that he is a man of great physical courage (“brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name” [I.2.16]), but he has never pretended that his ambition and his actions were anything but wicked. He may be a great criminal, but he is great in more than one sense of the word. He has always been totally honest with himself. That is one reason why the play is truly The Tragedy of Macbeth.
In his desperate state of mind right after seeing Banquo’s ghost, Macbeth had expressed to Lady Macbeth his determination to go “tomorrow, / And betimes” (that is, both speedily and early) to find out the Weird Sisters (III.4.133-134). (Shakespeare gives no hint of how he knows where to look for them.) For their last appearance in the play, the Witches are once again alone on stage when the scene (IV.1) opens. This time they are chanting their spells as they stand around a cauldron bubbling with a stew made up of the body parts of a disgusting and even horrifying assortment of animals and humans: “Eye of newt, and toe of frog, . . . Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips, / Finger of birth-strangled babe / Ditch-delivered by a drab [whore]” (IV.1.12-34). Like any horror-film writer of today, Shakespeare wants to thrill his audience with fear and disgust and a sense of the uncanny. He wants the audience to feel that beings who engage in such horrific rituals, even if they themselves are not supernatural, really do have supernatural powers, including the power to see into the future. The audiences of Shakespeare’s time were generally more ready to believe in the supernatural and witchcraft than audiences now, so their theatrical experience of the witch scenes (and of the ghost scenes in Hamlet) was probably a lot more intense than ours.
Maybe on the principle that “it takes one to know one,” the Second Witch welcomes Macbeth’s entrance on stage with the words: “Something wicked this way comes” (IV.1.67). It is clear from this that the Witches know all the truth of Macbeth’s hidden criminality, just as the Ghost in the boudoir scene knows how far Prince Hamlet has gotten in carrying out its command of revenge. Addressing the Sisters as “you secret, black, and midnight hags” (70), Macbeth demands that they “answer me . . ./ To what I ask you,” even if the destruction of all of Nature and man’s works is the price (72-83). The measure of his desperation is shown by the way he piles the items of imagined universal destruction one on top of the other for nine powerful lines. In fact, Macbeth does not demand, he “conjures” (72), which, in the sense of to “constrain (spirit) to appear by invocation” (Concise Oxford Dictionary), is exactly what witches and magicians do. It is as though Macbeth is turning the Witches’ own magic on themselves.
The Witches declare to be ready to meet Macbeth’s demand. They even present him with a choice:

Say if thou’dst rather hear it from our mouths

Or from our masters.
(IV.1.84-850)
Macbeth again shows fearlessness by choosing to hear his fate directly from the mouths of the Witches’ master spirits, who in the nature of things could be even more dangerous to deal with than they are. A spell is pronounced (86-90) and the first of three Apparitions appears, like each of the following ones, accompanied by thunder. It is “an Armed Head” and it warns Macbeth to “beware Macduff, / Beware the Thane of Fife” (93-94), confirming Macbeth’s “fear” from that source (96). The Second Apparition, “a bloody Child” and “More potent than the first” (98), declares to Macbeth that “none of woman born” can harm him (102-103), and the momentary effect is to cause Macbeth to withdraw the death sentence he had in his mind passed on Macduff after hearing the first Apparition. But the softening effect is only momentary: “But yet I’ll make assurance double sure,” he considers; “Thou shalt not live” (105-106).
The Third Apparition is described in a stage direction (108) as “a Child Crowned, with a tree in his hand.” It pronounces that

 Macbeth shall never vanquished be until

Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him.
(114-116)

This Macbeth declares to be impossible, and he is again reassured by these “Sweet bodements, good” (118). He sees himself in the third person, “our high-placed Macbeth,” living out a full span of life (120-121). But like the character in the fairy tale who is not content with having his three wishes granted and has to add a fourth, “Yet,” he tells the Witches,

my heart
Throbs to know one thing. Tell me, if your art

Can tell so much: Shall Banquo’s issue ever
Reign in this kingdom?
(122-125)
Again he shows courage to confront his fate directly, for in spite of the Witches’ caution that he should “Seek to know no more” (125), he violently insists: “I will be satisfied” (126).
It is always a mistake to push the gods. “A show of eight Kings and [a “blood-boltered” (145)] Banquo, last [King] with a glass [mirror] in his hand” (stage direction, 133) at one stroke undoes all the comfort Macbeth has taken so far in the spirits’ showings. He is shattered. He curses the hour, the witches, and “all those that trust them!” (161), in effect, cursing himself. He has good reason to, since now he knows for certain what before he had only feared: “For Banquo’s issue have I filed my mind . . . And mine eternal jewel / Given to the common enemy of man” (III.1.65-69). The Witches' work is done.