DUNCAN
No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive Our bosom interest: go pronounce his present death, And with his former title greet Macbeth.
ROSS
I'll see it done.
DUNCAN
What he hath lost noble Macbeth hath won. Exeunt
In this extract, Duncan strips the previous thane of Cawdor of his title and naively assumes that the new thane of Cawdor – Macbeth - shall “no more...deceive”. By referring to the thane of Cawdor solely by his title, it establishes the importance of rank and status, whilst creating a sense of irony, as Macbeth will later betray Duncan more shockingly than his predecessor. “Hath lost….hath won” echoes the witches’ speech in Act 1 Scene 1, where they say “when the battle’s lost and won”. The parallel between these two phrases suggests that, like the witches, the situation is ambiguous, and that Macbeth’s gain of power is unstable and temporary. This sense of regression to the mean (the statistical idea that if a variable’s first measurement is extreme, the second will be closer the average – that however bad or good things get, they always come back to the middle) is unsettling for the audience as it suggests that, although Macbeth rises in status and power, his downfall is inevitable. That “hath lost ... hath won” brings us back to the witches also emphasises their role in Macbeth’s downfall and, to a Jacobean audience, would indicate that they had some control of his fate. A common superstition was the idea that witches’ microcosmic actions could cause macrocosmic consequences, and the parallel phrasing does seem to lend itself to an interpretation which suggests Macbeth’s destiny has been altered before he even learns the prophecies.
- Raquel, Elise and Zosia