First Witch
All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis!
Second Witch
All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!
Third Witch
All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!
The witches do not reply to Macbeth’s question, but instead tell him their prophecies. Their lines are synchronised, the parallel construction showing the witches as a single, acherontic entity. They begin with the polite greeting of “all hail”, a formality which is unsettling given their uncivilised appearance and ‘otherness’. The sound of their speech is also altered and sounds 'wrong' (a bit like a cat barking), as they deliver their prophecies in a loose iambic pentameter. The witches, it seems, are deceptive, able to make a pretence of respect and deference in order to appeal to the “noble Macbeth”. The first greeting is a straightforward one: he is, already, “thane of Glamis”. This past truth is followed by the present tense greeting as “thane of Cawdor”, a title we as an audience know has already been granted to him. The third is a prophecy, shifted from present to future tense, and the modal verb “shall” asserts a certainty. The definitive strength of this greeting is perhaps undermined by the deceptive “hereafter”; it is imprecise, suggesting ‘after this time’, but stating neither a start nor end point. The preternatural witches appear to give Macbeth a promise of kingship, but even in their clearest prophecies, they equivocate, holding back detail.
~ Joe and Hannah