Act 1, Scene 3

A heath.

[Thunder. Enter the three Witches.]
First Witch
90 Where hast thou been, sister?
Second Witch
91 Killing swine.
Third Witch
92 Sister, where thou?
First Witch
93 A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap,
94 And mounch'd, and mounch'd, and mounch'd:—"Give me," quoth I:
95 "Aroint thee, witch!" the rump-fed ronyon cries.
96 Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger:
97 But in a sieve I'll thither sail,
98 And, like a rat without a tail,
99 I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.
Second Witch
100 I'll give thee a wind.
First Witch
101 Thou art kind.
Third Witch
102 And I another.
First Witch
103 I myself have all the other:
104 And the very ports they blow,
105 All the quarters that they know
106 I' the shipman's card.
107 I will drain him dry as hay:
108 Sleep shall neither night nor day
109 Hang upon his pent-house lid;
110 He shall live a man forbid:
111 Weary seven-nights nine times nine
112 Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine:
113 Though his bark cannot be lost,
114 Yet it shall be tempest-tost.—
115 Look what I have.
Second Witch
116 Show me, show me.
First Witch
117 Here I have a pilot's thumb,
118 Wreck'd as homeward he did come.
[Drum within.]
Third Witch
119 A drum, a drum!
120 Macbeth doth come.
All
121 The weird sisters, hand in hand,
122 Posters of the sea and land,
123 Thus do go about, about:
124 Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,
125 And thrice again, to make up nine:—
126 Peace!—the charm's wound up.
[Enter Macbeth and Banquo.]
Macbeth
127 So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
Banquo
128 How far is't call'd to Forres?—What are these
129 So wither'd, and so wild in their attire,
130 That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,
131 And yet are on't?—Live you? or are you aught
132 That man may question? You seem to understand me,
133 By each at once her chappy finger laying
134 Upon her skinny lips:—you should be women,
135 And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
136 That you are so.
Macbeth
137 Speak, if you can;—what are you?
First Witch
138 All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!
Second Witch
139 All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!
Third Witch
140 All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter!
Banquo
141 Good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear
142 Things that do sound so fair?— I' the name of truth,
143 Are ye fantastical, or that indeed
144 Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner
145 You greet with present grace and great prediction
146 Of noble having and of royal hope,
147 That he seems rapt withal:—to me you speak not:
148 If you can look into the seeds of time,
149 And say which grain will grow, and which will not,
150 Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
151 Your favors nor your hate.
First Witch
152 Hail!
Second Witch
153 Hail!
Third Witch
154 Hail!
First Witch
155 Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.
Second Witch
156 Not so happy, yet much happier.
Third Witch
157 Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none:
158 So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!
First Witch
159 Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!
Macbeth
160 Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more:
161 By Sinel's death I know I am Thane of Glamis;
162 But how of Cawdor? The Thane of Cawdor lives,
163 A prosperous gentleman; and to be king
164 Stands not within the prospect of belief,
165 No more than to be Cawdor. Say from whence
166 You owe this strange intelligence? or why
167 Upon this blasted heath you stop our way
168 With such prophetic greeting?—Speak, I charge you.
[Witches vanish.]
Banquo
169 The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,
170 And these are of them:—whither are they vanish'd?
Macbeth
171 Into the air; and what seem'd corporal melted
172 As breath into the wind.—Would they had stay'd!
Banquo
173 Were such things here as we do speak about?
174 Or have we eaten on the insane root
175 That takes the reason prisoner?
Macbeth
176 Your children shall be kings.
Banquo
177 You shall be king.
Macbeth
178 And Thane of Cawdor too; went it not so?
Banquo
179 To the selfsame tune and words. Who's here?
[Enter Ross and Angus.]
Ross
180 The king hath happily receiv'd, Macbeth,
181 The news of thy success: and when he reads
182 Thy personal venture in the rebels' fight,
183 His wonders and his praises do contend
184 Which should be thine or his: silenc'd with that,
185 In viewing o'er the rest o' the self-same day,
186 He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks,
187 Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make,
188 Strange images of death. As thick as hail
189 Came post with post; and every one did bear
190 Thy praises in his kingdom's great defense,
191 And pour'd them down before him.
Angus
192 We are sent
193 To give thee, from our royal master, thanks;
194 Only to herald thee into his sight,
195 Not pay thee.
Ross
196 And, for an earnest of a greater honor,
197 He bade me, from him, call thee Thane of Cawdor:
198 In which addition, hail, most worthy thane,
199 For it is thine.
Banquo
200 What, can the devil speak true?
Macbeth
201 The Thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me
202 In borrow'd robes?
Angus
203 Who was the Thane lives yet;
204 But under heavy judgement bears that life
205 Which he deserves to lose. Whether he was combin'd
206 With those of Norway, or did line the rebel
207 With hidden help and vantage, or that with both
208 He labour'd in his country's wreck, I know not;
209 But treasons capital, confess'd and proved,
210 Have overthrown him.
[Aside.]
Macbeth
211 Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor:
212 The greatest is behind.—Thanks for your pains.—
213 Do you not hope your children shall be kings,
214 When those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me
215 Promis'd no less to them?
Banquo
216 That, trusted home,
217 Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,
218 Besides the Thane of Cawdor. But 'tis strange:
219 And oftentimes to win us to our harm,
220 The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
221 Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
222 In deepest consequence.—
223 Cousins, a word, I pray you.
[Aside.]
Macbeth
224 Two truths are told,
225 As happy prologues to the swelling act
226 Of the imperial theme.—I thank you, gentlemen.—
[Aside.]
Macbeth
227 This supernatural soliciting
228 Cannot be ill; cannot be good:—if ill,
229 Why hath it given me earnest of success,
230 Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor:
231 If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
232 Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
233 And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
234 Against the use of nature? Present fears
235 Are less than horrible imaginings:
236 My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
237 Shakes so my single state of man, that function
238 Is smother'd in surmise; and nothing is
239 But what is not.
Banquo
240 Look, how our partner's rapt.
[Aside.]
Macbeth
241 If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me
242 Without my stir.
Banquo
243 New honors come upon him,
244 Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould
245 But with the aid of use.
[Aside.]
Macbeth
246 Come what come may,
247 Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
Banquo
248 Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure.
Macbeth
249 Give me your favor:—my dull brain was wrought
250 With things forgotten. Kind gentlemen, your pains
251 Are register'd where every day I turn
252 The leaf to read them.—Let us toward the king.—
253 Think upon what hath chanc'd; and, at more time,
254 The interim having weigh'd it, let us speak
255 Our free hearts each to other.
Banquo
256 Very gladly.
Macbeth
257 Till then, enough.—Come, friends.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 95archaic vocab
“Aroint thee, witch! the rump-fed ronyon”
'Aroint thee' means 'get away' or 'begone' — a command to drive off a witch. 'Rump-fed' means fattened on scraps (rump cuts of meat); 'ronyon' is a contemptuous term for a mangy or scrawny woman. The sailor's wife is calling the First Witch a worthless creature and ordering her away.
TLN 97cultural context
“in a sieve I'll thither sail, And, like a rat without a tail”
Sailing in a sieve and taking the form of a rat without a tail are both marks of a witch's supernatural power. In Elizabethan and Jacobean witchcraft belief, witches could cross the sea in a sieve, and they could transform into animals — but the transformation was imperfect: a witch as a rat lacked a tail. These details are not fantasy invented for the play; they match the actual confessions recorded in witchcraft trials of the period.
historical The weird sisters and Jacobean witchcraft
TLN 109archaic vocab
“Hang upon his pent-house lid”
'Pent-house lid' means eyelid. A pent-house is a lean-to roof — a small roof that angles down from a wall — and the eyelid overhangs the eye in the same way. Sleep shall not 'hang' upon it, meaning it shall never weigh his eyelid shut. The image is one of the play's first references to eyes as the site where sleep and wakefulness, guilt and waking horror, contest each other.
TLN 110archaic vocab
“He shall live a man forbid”
'Forbid' here means 'accursed' or 'under a supernatural ban' — one whom fate has rejected and from whom all grace is withheld. The word does not simply mean 'forbidden' in the modern sense; it means the sailor has been cursed in a quasi-legal supernatural sense, cut off from the ordinary protections of human life.
TLN 121historical topical
“The weird sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the sea and land”
'Weird' comes from Old English 'wyrd', meaning fate or destiny; the weird sisters are not simply witches but creatures of destiny itself. 'Posters' means those who travel with extraordinary speed (to 'post' was to ride hard). The chant identifies them as beings who move between sea and land at will — the same supernatural mobility as their sieve-sailing — and as agents of fate rather than merely malicious hags.
historical The weird sisters and Jacobean witchcraft
TLN 133cultural context
“each at once her chappy finger laying Upon her skinny lips:—you should be women, And yet your beards forbid me”
'Chappy' means chapped, cracked, and roughened. Banquo notes two things that make the witches look inhuman: their chapped fingers pressed to their lips in silence, and the fact that they have beards though they appear to be women. In Elizabethan and Jacobean witch belief, physical abnormality — hairy faces, withered skin — was taken as a sign of demonic association. Banquo's description emphasizes their ambiguity: they look like women but carry the outward signs of something else.
historical The weird sisters and Jacobean witchcraft
TLN 138historical topical
“All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glamis! All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter”
The three witches greet Macbeth with three titles in ascending order: Thane of Glamis (which he already is), Thane of Cawdor (which he does not yet know he has been given), and future king (which he has not been promised by any human agency). A 'thane' is a Scottish noble title, roughly equivalent to an English earl. The three-part hailing is the play's central prophetic moment and the source of the ambition Macbeth spends the rest of the play acting on.
historical The weird sisters and Jacobean witchcrafthistorical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 148rhetorical device
“If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow, and which will not, Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favors nor your hate”
Banquo's 'seeds of time' is a metaphor for the hidden, germinating future — each possible event a seed, only some of which will grow to fulfilment. The image is precise and controlled: Banquo is asking whether the witches can sort out which of those seeds are viable. Unlike Macbeth, who has already reacted with fear and longing, Banquo holds himself deliberately indifferent — he 'neither begs nor fears' their answer. The contrast marks Banquo as the morally steadier of the two men.
TLN 155rhetorical device
“Lesser than Macbeth, and greater. Not so happy, yet much happier. Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none”
The three prophecies for Banquo are composed of paradoxes: lesser yet greater, unhappy yet happier. 'Lesser' because Banquo will never be king; 'greater' because he will not have a king's blood on his hands. 'Not so happy' because he will not achieve the crown; 'much happier' because he will not bear Macbeth's guilt. 'Get kings' means to beget, to father, a line of kings. The paradoxes are the witches' preferred mode — truth packaged so that it undermines itself at every turn.
historical Banquo and the Stuart line (the show of kings)
TLN 200biblical allusion
“What, can the devil speak true?”
When Ross confirms that Macbeth has been named Thane of Cawdor, Banquo's response — 'can the devil speak true?' — invokes the theological belief that evil spirits can tell the truth when it serves to mislead. In Christian teaching, the devil is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44), but he may offer a true fact in order to lead someone into a greater error. Banquo already suspects this is what the witches are doing.
TLN 201rhetorical device
“why do you dress me In borrow'd robes?”
Macbeth refuses the title of Cawdor with an image of ill-fitting clothing: to wear a title that belongs to someone else is to wear borrowed clothes. The garment metaphor runs through the whole play as an image of Macbeth's uneasy relationship with power and identity — titles that do not fit, clothes too large for the wearer. Angus later echoes it directly: Macbeth's stolen title hangs 'like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief' (5.2).
TLN 219historical topical
“oftentimes to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths; Win us with honest trifles, to betray's In deepest consequence”
Banquo warns that evil agents — 'instruments of darkness,' meaning demonic powers — will offer true facts ('honest trifles') to win trust, then lead victims into catastrophic choices ('deepest consequence'). This is the theological mechanism behind the witch-prophecies: small truths used as bait, the hook set in the larger and more dangerous promise. Banquo names the trap clearly. Macbeth hears him and ignores the warning.
historical The weird sisters and Jacobean witchcraft
TLN 227syntax grammar
“This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill; cannot be good”
'Soliciting' means urging or inciting — the witches' prophecies are a kind of supernatural summons toward action. Macbeth's aside is a logical trap he constructs for himself: if the prophecy is evil, why has it given him a true title? If it is good, why does imagining it make his heart race and his hair stand up? He cannot reason his way out, and the paralysis of that double bind — the 'surmise' that 'smothers function' — is where the play's tragedy begins to take hold.
TLN 236archaic vocab
“My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man, that function Is smother'd in surmise; and nothing is But what is not”
Macbeth admits that merely thinking of murder — a murder still only imaginary ('fantastical') — has already paralyzed him. 'Single state of man' means his unified self, his whole person as one coherent being; 'function' means his capacity to act or think clearly; 'smother'd in surmise' means choked by speculation. 'Nothing is / But what is not' is his conclusion: the imagined future feels more real to him than the present. He is already, at this point, more in the world of murder than in the world of the heath.