King Duncan of Scotland (c. 1001-1039) is the ruler of Scotland who Macbeth murders for his throne. Shakespeare's Duncan is an elderly man, a respected and noble figure; as Macbeth reflects, he 'Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been / So clear in his great office, that his virtues / Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongu'd' (1.7.17-19). Duncan's generous and trusting nature contrasts strikingly with the evil which surrounds Macbeth. Though he appears only in Act 1, he is an important symbol of the values that are to be defeated and restored in the course of the play. His generosity and fatherly affection for Macbeth make his murder even more appalling. The unconscious irony is sharp when he greets Macbeth, who is already plotting against him, with a declaration of his own ingratitude, in 1.4.14-16. Duncan's faith, misplaced first in the rebellious Cawdor and then in Macbeth, provides the audience with an introduction to the atmosphere of betrayal that exists throughout the world of the play. 

Malcolm (Prince Malcolm Canmore, d. 1093) is the son of the murdered King Duncan of Scotland. In 1.4 Malcolm is named his father's successor to the dismay of Macbeth, who plots to take the crown himself. However, when Duncan is murdered, Malcolm and his brother Donalbain fear for their lives and worry that suspicion will fall on them. They flee the country in 2.3 and leave Macbeth to occupy the throne. Malcolm seeks refuge at the court of the English king, where we find him in 4.3. Macduff joins him there, and they lead an army to Scotland in Act 5, and defeat and kill Macbeth. At the play's close, Malcolm makes a stately speech that thanks his supporters and announces his forthcoming coronation as King of Scotland. 

Like Macduff, the young prince is a figure of goodness placed in opposition to Macbeth's evil, and as such is somewhat two-dimensional. He is clever when he devises a form of camouflage—each soldier carries a branch of a tree as the army marches on Dunsinane—that proves significant in Macbeth's downfall. However, Malcolm is most distinctive when he tests Macduff’s patriotism, in 4.3.1-139. The prospective king describes himself as an intemperate and dishonest degenerate, certain to be bad for the country. When Macduff despairs for Scotland, Malcolm reveals himself as a virtuous prince and accepts Macduff as a leader of his invasion army. This episode has two functions: most important, it stresses the atmosphere of distrust that Macbeth's evil has loosed on Scotland. It also presents Malcolm as a sensible, cautious young man who seems likely to be a successful ruler. This impression, along with our recollection of the clever camouflage, helps establish the sense of healing that comes with his triumph at the play's close. Caithness refers to him, appropriately, as 'the medicine of the sickly weal' (5.2.27). 

The historical Malcolm did return from exile to defeat Macbeth, but Shakespeare's treatment of his career is otherwise almost entirely altered. Malcolm was a young child when Macbeth seized the throne in 1039. Duncan was not murdered, so Malcolm did not flee to avoid suspicion. He was in fact sent to his uncle, Earl Siward, and he later lived at the court of King Edward the Confessor of England, as in the play. Only 15 years later, once he was a man, did Malcolm attempt an invasion of Scotland in 1054. The attack was repulsed though some territory was taken. Three years later a second attempt succeeded; Macbeth was defeated and killed, and Malcolm took the throne. 

Donalbain (c. 1033-1099) is the younger son of the murdered King Duncan of Scotland. Donalbain plays a very minor part in the play; after he attends his father in three scenes of Act 1, he speaks for the first time in 2.3 after Duncan's murder. He suggests to his brother, Malcolm, that they flee, lest suspicion fall upon them.  He declares that he will go to Ireland while Malcolm goes to England. Malcolm returns to reclaim the kingdom from Macbeth, but Donalbain does not reappear in the play though he is mentioned several times, lastly in 5.2.7-8, where it is observed that he is not with Malcolm's army of invasion. However, in the play's final speech, Malcolm says that he intends 'calling home our exii'd friends abroad' (5.9.32), a remark that may remind us of Donalbain. 

Macbeth (c. 1005-1057) is the title character of Macbeth, a Scottish nobleman who kills King Duncan of Scotland and rules the country until he is killed in combat by Lord Macduff. The evil of Macbeth's deed, and its effects on him and on Scotland, are the central elements of the play. He is conscious of the evil his ambition gives rise to, but he cannot overcome temptation. This is combined with his ambition, the urging of the equally ambitious Lady Macbeth, and the encouragement given him by the Witches, whose supernatural powers seem certain to help him though in fact they bring him to his doom.  As a man who abandons his own potential for good, Macbeth may be seen as an illustration of the fall of man, the prime Judeo-Christian example of sinful humanity's loss of God's grace. Eventually, Macbeth is destroyed by two virtuous men—Macduff and Duncan's son Malcolm—who are his opposites in the play's balance of good and evil. 

One of the play's manifestations of the power of evilis the collapse of Macbeth's personality. Macbeth commits or causes to be committed, more than four murders: first, that of the king, which he performs himself in 2 2 and then those of Banquo, in 3.3, and of Lady Macduff and her children, in 4.2. His behavior during and after each of these events is different, and in this progression is the heart of the drama. 

We hear of Macbeth before we see him. In 1.1 the Witches reveal that he is their target, and in 1.2 the king hears of his prowess on the battlefield. He appears to be a brave and loyal follower of the king, but when the Witches suggest, in 1.3, that Macbeth is to become king himself, we see that he has already entertained the possibility of usurping Duncan's crown.  However, in 1.7, as he contemplates the prospect of killing King Duncan, he wavers. He still remembers his society's crude discipline, the 'even-handed Justice' (1 7.10) that dictates that if he kills the king, someone else may kill him. He further acknowledges that in simple decency he should not kill the man who is his kinsman and his guest, and who has, moreover, been notably kind to him. On another ethical level, he recognizes that it is evil to deprive society of a virtuous man and a fine ruler. 

Macbeth still retains the moral sensibility to declare, 'I dare do all that may become a man. / Who dares do more is none' (1.7.46-47), but Lady Macbeth encourages him to overcome his scruples, and in 2.2 he kills the king. He is immediately plagued by his conscience; he tells of how he 'could not say Amen' (2.2.28) and of the voices that foretold sleeplessness. His absorption with his bloody hands foreshadows his wife's descent into madness in 5.1. Nevertheless, he carries his plot through and is crowned between 2.4 and 3.1. 

Though the influence of the Witches and of Lady Macbeth is very prominent and reflects different aspects of the ways we can fall into evil, Macbeth is basically not controlled by them. His story is one of a moral choice, and the consequences of that choice. It is clear that Lady Macbeth's influence helps him on his way, but once he has killed Duncan he withdraws from her, and she has no role in his subsequent plots; he plainly can get along without her. At the same time, his response to the supernatural is carefully contrasted with Banquo's suspicion of the Witches. Macbeth has every opportunity to avoid his fate: he could have ignored Lady Macbeth, or followed the lead of Banquo. However, he made a different choice, for he is a driven, self-destructive man. 

Once installed as king, he considers murdering Banquo. He hopes to dispose of the Witches' prediction that Banquo's descendants will rule. He is troubled and cannot rest; he sees life as a 'fitful fever' (3.2.23), and he cries out, 'O! full of scorpions is my mind' (3.2.36). But he hires murderers to dispose of Banquo and his son Fleance. Again, he is tormented by his conscience, especially by the sight of Banquo's Ghost. He returns to the Witches a second time and is warned by the Apparitions against Macduff. He determines to eliminate this threat also, with the result that the murderers kill Macduff’s wife and children, although Macduff has already escaped to England. 

By now, however, Macbeth's qualms have disappeared, replaced by a more fundamental disorder. We next see him in 5.3 as he prepares to defend himself against the army of Malcolm and Macduff, and he has become a different person. He veers wildly between rage and despair and has lost any emotional connection to his fellow humans. He declares that he is 'sick at heart' and has 'lived long enough' (5.3.19, 22), and he realises that all that he might once have expected in his old age, 'honour, love, obedience, troops of friends' (5.3.25), is irrevocably lost. Informed of Lady Macbeth's death, he can only reflect on the meaninglessness of life. He has lost his ordinary human repertoire of responses to life and death. 

Even his courage, the only virtue he has retained, has an inhuman quality: 'bear-like, I must fight the course' (5.7.2), he growls. Only when he finally understands the deceptive prophecies of the Apparitions does he succumb once again, too late, to a genuine human emotion^. He feels sheer terror—'it hath cow'd my better part of man', he cries (5.8.18) when he realises that Macduff is not 'of woman born' (5.8.13). He recovers courage enough to die, and thus in death he is not wholly lost. 

His basic strength is also demonstrated in his capacity to face and withstand the ugly truth about himself. He sees the evil to which he has subjected himself and his world. He recognises his own immorality, and he is not satisfied with the position he attains, but he nevertheless defends this position with continued murder. He is aware of this irrational phenomenon; one of his most fascinating features is that he is conscious of the goodness he abandons. When he first contemplates the murder of Duncan, he says its 'horrid image doth unfix my hair' (1.3.135). He recognizes the 'deep damnation' to be expected and his hallucination of the dagger confirms the force of this knowledge. After he commits the murder his immediate concern is not with being discovered, but with his conscience. 'To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself (2.2.72), he says. And at the end of the play he is tormented by the awareness that his life could have been altogether different. It is the contrast with what might have been that makes Macbeth a tragic figure. Though Malcolm understandably refers to 'this dead butcher, and his fiend-like Queen' (5.9.35), the real point of the play resides in the extent to which Macbeth is not simply a monster. He cannot accept his evil callously; he suffers for it. 

The historical Macbeth did indeed seize the throne from his cousin Duncan, but Shakespeare's depiction of the man and his reign is otherwise entirely fictional. Shakespeare took some of his errors from his source, Holinshed’s Chronicles, which itself depended upon the unreliable, quasi-legendary history of Hector Boece. However, much of the playwright's version varies from Holinshed, anyway, for he was interested in drama, not history. Though in the play the stigma against Macbeth's action is immense, his usurpation was fairly ordinary in 1 Ith-century Scotland. Duncan's predecessor, King Malcolm II, had taken the throne when he murdered his cousin, Kenneth III. By the standards of the day, Macbeth's claim to the throne was fairly legitimate, as Holinshed makes clear. Macbeth, like Duncan, was a grandson of Malcolm II, and thus a plausible heir. He might also have asserted a claim as the husband of Gruoch (the real Lady Macbeth), who was a granddaughter of Kenneth III. However, there is no evidence that he received—or needed—any prodding from his wife to usurp power. Tradition dictated that any male member of the royal family who could establish that he had regal qualities—usually interpreted as control of an armed force—was qualified to succeed to the crown. In principle, an election within the family settled conflicting claims, though a resort to force was ordinary. 

Banquo is friend and later victim of Macbeth. In 1.3 Banquo and Macbeth encounter the Witches, who predict that Macbeth will become Thane of Cawdor and King of Scotland. They add that Banquo, whom they describe as 'Lesser than Macbeth, and greater' (1.3.65), shall father a line of rulers, though he shall not be one himself. Macbeth, inspired by this encounter to fulfill his ambition, kills King Duncan and seizes the throne. He then worries about the possibility that his kingdom will fall to Banquo's heirs, and he orders Banquo and his son Fleance murdered. In 3.3 the First Murderer and his companions kill Banquo, though Fleance escapes. Banquo's Ghost later appears to Macbeth, aggravating his bad conscience. In 4.1 the Ghost confirms the Witches' prediction that his descendants will be Kings. King James I, England's ruler in Shakespeare's day, was believed to be descended from an historical Lord Banquo. 

Banquo is a decent and honorable nobleman who senses that the Witches are evil and thus not to be relied on. He warns Macbeth that 'oftentimes, to win us to our harm, / The instruments of Darkness tell us truths' (1.3.123-124), and his concern contrasts strikingly with Macbeth's susceptibility to the Witches.  Banquo's resistance points up Macbeth's failure to resist and stresses his tendency towards evil, the flaw that makes the tragedy possible. When he decides to murder Banquo, Macbeth acknowledges his 'royalty of nature' (3.1.49). He fears that Banquo's righteousness may turn him into an enemy. Thus, we see that Banquo's fate is dictated by his virtue, just as Macbeth's is determined by his villainy. 

In Shakespeare's source for Macbeth, Holinshed’s Chronicles, Banquo collaborates with Macbeth in the murder of Duncan and is killed because he knows too much. The playwright may have altered Banquo simply to avoid depicting the king's ancestor as a murderer, though Banquo could merely have been omitted to achieve this end. However, Shakespeare probably realized that the play is stronger with only a single villain, and Banquo's supposed ancestry to the king made him an apt choice to stand in opposition to that villain as a pointedly virtuous comrade. That this was Banquo's more important function for Shakespeare is suggested by the playwright's disregard for Fleance's fate or for the question of Banquo's descendants, once Fleance's survival ensures that he could have had some. 

Macduff, Thane of Fife (active c. 1054?) is the rival and vanquisher of Macbeth. After Macbeth murders King Duncan of Scotland and succeeds him on the throne, Macduff joins Duncan's son Malcolm in exile in England. There he learns that Macbeth has massacred his family, and when he and Malcolm lead an army against Macbeth, Macduff seeks out the usurper at Dunsinane to exact personal vengeance. Macbeth relies on the supernatural assurance that no man 'of woman born' (4.1.80, 5.8.13) can harm him, but it turns out that Macduff was 'from his mother's womb / Untimely ripp'd' (5.8.14-15)—that is, delivered by Caesarean section and thus not 'born' in the ordinary construction of the word. In the subsequent fight, Macduff kills Macbeth; he presents the usurper's severed head to Malcolm, in 5.9.  

Shakespeare painstakingly builds Macduff up as the play's agent of retribution. We first notice Macduff in 2.4, when he returns to Fife rather than attend Macbeth's coronation. In 3.4 Macbeth suspects Macduff is hostile, and in 3.6 we hear that he has fled to join Malcolm. Thus, even before he takes a prominent role, Macduff distinguishes himself because he refuses to accept Macbeth's succession to the crown. In 4.1 Macbeth is told by the Apparitions to 'Beware Macduff (4.1.71), and it is evident that the Thane of Fife will be the usurper's rival though Macbeth is calmed by the Apparitions' other predictions. In 4.3 Macduff proves that he is a disinterested patriot. Malcolm fears that Macduff may be Macbeth's agent and tests him. The prince pretends to be a degenerate who would make a terrible king. Macduff despairs for Scotland, and Malcolm accordingly accepts him. Thus, the playwright places Macduff’s virtue in clear opposition to the villainy of Macbeth. As a symbol of triumphant good, Macduff is a somewhat stylized character. He rejects Macbeth, he proves himself dedicated to Scotland, he is able to overcome the magic that Macbeth relies on, and in the end he kills the villain. A multifaceted persona is not required for such a character, and generally we do not see one. However, he has one majestic moment that powerfully evokes our sympathy for him as a man. In one of Shakespeare's most moving episodes, Macduff grieves for the death of his wife, Lady Macduff, and their family, at the hands of Macbeth's hired killers. At first, he can hardly believe it: 'All my pretty ones? / Did you say all?—0 Hell-kite!—All?' (4.3.216-217), he cries. When Malcolm encourages him to revenge and says,'Dispute it like a man' (4.3.220), Macduff replies with great dignity, 'I shall do so; / But I must also feel it as  a man: / I cannot but remember such things were / THat were most precious to me' (4.3.220-223). We are deeply moved, aware that the grieving thane is profoundly engaged with his love and sorrow. The source of Macduff s virtue is exposed: he is a complete human being who cannot sever the bonds of kinship and love. We see that Macduff’s strong acceptance of his grief is the opposite of the cold inhumanity of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

Thane of Rosse (Ross) is a Scottish nobleman. Rosse is a pawn of the plot; he often is the bearer of news. In 1.2 Rosse tells King Duncan of Macbeth’s success in battle, and in 1.3 he conveys to Macbeth the king's thanks. In 2.4 he discusses evil omens with the Old Man and speaks with Macduff of Macbeth's coronation. In 4.2 he attempts to encourage the bereft Lady Macduff. In this scene he delivers a speech that stresses the play's motif of fear and mistrust. 'Cruel are the times, when we are traitors, /And do not know ourselves' (4.2.18-19), he says. In 4.3 he reports her murder to her husband and joins him in revolt against Macbeth. In 5.9 he tells Siward of the death of his son, Young Siward. Rosse's greatest significance is seen in his gradual revolt against; Macbeth. He represents Scotland as a whole, which suffers from Macbeth's evil and then rejects him.

Fleance is the son of Banquo and the intended murder victim of Macbeth. The Witches-predict to Macbeth that he will be king but that Banquo's descendants will rule, rather than his own, so once Macbeth has seized the throne of Scotland, he decides that he must kill Banquo and Fleance to prevent the prediction coming true. Fleance appears briefly in 2.1, simply to establish his existence, and when Banquo is killed in 3.3 Fleance escapes after an even briefer appearance. Thus, the possibility is preserved that Banquo's line will eventually replace Macbeth's, and this is Fleance's sole function in Macbeth. Once his survival is noted, he is not mentioned in the remainder of the play. 

Siward (Sigurd the Dane), Earl of Northumberland (d. 1055) is an English ally of Malcolm and Macduff against Macbeth. Siward, a famous soldier who commands an army of 10,000 men, is provided by England's king to the exiled Prince Malcolm of Scotland. As a noble and knightly figure, Siward stands for the virtues lost to the world of the play through Macbeth's evil, and as a foreigner who must be brought in to restore the country's health, he points up the extremity of Scotland's need. He appears briefly several times in Act 5 and is a direct and simple soldier. His most notable moment comes when he is informed that his son, Young Siward, has died in com- bat. With noble fortitude he observes, 'Why then, God's soldier be he! / Had I as many sons as I have hairs, / I would not wish them to a fairer death.' (5 9 13-15). 

Shakespeare's original audiences will have recognized immediately that the Porter was imitating a familiar figure of the medieval Morality Play; the gatekeeper of hell who admits Christ to Limbo in the ancient legend of the 'Harrowing of Hell'. This gatekeeper guarded the literal mouth of hell—a familiar image from the painted backdrops of a gigantic, flaming lion's mouth (derived from Rev. xiii:2) used in the morality plays. The Porter makes it clear that we are to see Macbeth's castle as hell, and leaves no doubt whatever that the enormity of Macbeth's evil is of the greatest importance in the play. When the Porter finally opens the door and admits Macduff, a subtle analogy between Macduff and Christ is suggested. This foreshadows Macduff’s role as the final conqueror of the evil Macbeth.

The Old Man presents himself as venerable but unsophisticated—'Threescore and ten I can remember well' (2.4.1), he says when he introduces himself. This, along with his distinctively rustic image of the 'mousing owl' (2.4.13) that killed the falcon, helps establish that the play's catastrophe is universal. Scotland’s collapse due to Macbeth’s evil is a major motif of the play, and the country as a whole is represented by this ageing peasant.

With hypocritical charm. Lady Macbeth welcomes King Duncan to Inverness in 1.6, after which she must deal with her husband's qualms. She insinuates that he is not an adequate man if he gives in to his fears. 'When you durst do it, then you were a man' (1.7.49), she taunts. This tactic is another instance of dysfunctional sexuality as a manifestation of evil. She goes on to exploit her own sexuality when she describes the experience of nursing a loving infant. She insists that she would have ruthlessly 'plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, / And dash'd the brains out' (1.7.57-58), if it had been necessary to achieve their goal. Shamed by her vigour, Macbeth agrees to proceed, but in 2.2 it is left to her to break the horror-struck trance into which he falls after he murders Duncan and to bring their plan to completion. Her ruthless intensity has brought the throne within reach, and Macbeth is crowned soon thereafter.

Lady Macbeth's viciousness has horrified generations of readers and audiences. However, her grim fervor not only makes her fascinating—the role has consistently attracted major actresses of all periods—but it also illuminates the most important element of the play: Macbeth's relationship to evil. He clearly would not have carried out the regicide, although he had already considered it, without the impetus from her. She, on the other hand, willingly commits herself to evil. The contrast makes clear the potential goodness in Macbeth that he abandons when he kills his king. Lady Macbeth thus functions as a symbol of evil until she falls victim to it herself.

However, Shakespeare's major characters are never one-dimensional, and Lady Macbeth is not a simple cartoon of villainy. She, too, is repelled by the evil inherent in murder, though only subconsciously. She can only refer to the regicide euphemistically—Duncan must be 'provided for' (1.5.66); the killing is 'this enterprise' (1.7.48) or merely 'it' (5.1.34), and she is unable to bring herself to do the deed because Duncan too closely resembles her father. When Macbeth speaks of evil just after he has killed Duncan, she prophetically declares, 'These deeds must not be thought / After these ways: so, it will make us mad' (2.2.32-33). Finally, her anguish in the sleep-walking scene demonstrates convincingly that she simply cannot tolerate her too-hastily accepted immersion in evil. Lady Macbeth's madness, along with her husband's profound emotional malaise, is essential to one of the play's strongest effects. Because we see their dreadful breakdown so vividly, we must acknowledge that they are victims of evil as well as its instruments. Indeed, Lady Macbeth finally commits suicide, as reported in 5.9.36-37.

There may also be another cause for her madness.  She and Macbeth are obviously fond of each other, as we see when they first meet in 1.5. Macbeth's letter to her—read in her first speech—makes clear that they have long confided in each other, and that their ambitions are closely shared. Yet when they accomplish their long-sought goal it has an unforeseen consequence for her. Once Duncan has been killed, Lady Macbeth becomes increasingly unimportant to her husband as he begins to undergo the emotional collapse that is the play's principal development. She does not become Macbeth's 'dearest partner of greatness' (1.5.11), as both had anticipated, but is instead excluded from his confidence. He does not inform her of his plan to kill Banquo, and after her ineffectual attempts to control him when he sees Banquo's ghost, in 3.4, she disappears from the plot. The evil she was so willing to accept betrays her—as it betrays Macbeth—and produces only anguish in place of the rewards she had envisioned. Not only does she lose her husband to his increasingly dead emotional life, she also loses the access to power that had motivated her in the first place. Nothing remains to her and she goes insane. When she stimulates action, in Act 1, Lady Macbeth overflows with vitality; in 5.1 she is reduced to fear of the dark. Though she seemed much stronger than her husband, in the end she lacks the animal strength he uses to bear the aftermath of their deed to its fatal conclusion.

The intimacy between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth combined with the use of perverse sexuality as a symbol of moral disorder has led to a theatrical tradition (dating to the interpretation of Sarah Berhardt, in the late 19th century) that presents their relationship as highly charged sexually, and she as a bold flaunter of her sexual charms. However, the play could also suggest sublimated passions whose energies have been displaced onto political ambition. In any case, it is clear that their relationship—however construed—withers in the atmosphere of mistrust and emotional disturbance that is unleashed with Duncan's murder. 

Hecate's appearance in Macbeth was obviously added to the play after it was originally written (c.1606) but before it was published (1623). This can be determined because the songs were written by Thomas Middleton for a play, The Witch, probably written sometime between 1610 and 1620, and because 3.6 has been moved from its proper chronological position (it should follow 4.1), in order to separate the two Witch scenes, 3.5 and 4|.l, which would otherwise be in direct sequence. Because Middleton was associated with the King’s Men, the theatrical company that performed Macbeth in the early 17th century, and because the Hecate episodes are clearly designed to introduce Middleton's songs, it has been traditionally presumed that he wrote them. However, the Hecate passages of Macbeth are quite different in style from Middleton's work, and most modern scholars believe that someone else wrote these lines, possibly—though it is a minority opinion—Shakespeare himself.

Witches are a group of characters in Macbeth, supernatural beings who encourage Macbeth in his evil inclinations. In 1.1 three Witches appear in the thunder and lightning of a storm; they say that they will meet again to encounter Macbeth. In 1.3 they boast of their evil deeds before they accost Macbeth and Banquo. They greet the former with titles he does not possess: Thane of Cawdor and 'King hereafter' (1.3.50)-—though we already know that Macbeth has been named Thane of Cawdor—and they assure Banquo that he shall not be a king but that his descendants shall. After they make these puzzling remarks, they disappear. When Macbeth and Lady Macbeth learn that he is in fact Thane of Cawdor and the Witches' prophecy is corroborated, their ambition is sparked to murder King Duncan so that Macbeth can rule Scotland. Then, once he is king, Macbeth worries over the Witches' pronouncement that Banquo's heirs would replace his own, and he murders him, as well. Thus, the Witches inspire the central action of the play.  In 3.5 we see the three Witches with a more powerful spirit, Hecate, who is accompanied by several more witches. (However, most scholars believe that this scene was not written by Shakespeare, and that Macbeth's Witches were originally only three in number.) In 4.1 the Witches concoct a magical brew in a cauldron. They are preparing for another visit from Macbeth, who wishes to learn what he must do to assure his safety now that he is king. They summon the Apparitions, whose predictions seem to promise safety but actually foretell his destruction. Finally, in a passage that may be a non-Shakespearean interpolation, the Witches perform a ritual dance, after which they vanish. 

Though their appearances are brief, the Witches have an important function in Macbeth. The play opens with their grim and stormy meeting, and this contributes greatly to its pervasive tone of mysterious evil. Moreover, they offer another important theme of the play, the psychology of evil. The Witches are an enactment of the irrational. The supernatural world is terrifying because it is beyond human control, and in the play it is therefore symbolic of the unpredictable force of human motivation. At their first appearance, the Witches state an ambiguity that rules the play until its close: 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair:' (1.1.11). Their deceptive pictures of the future—both in their initial predictions of Macbeth's rise, and in the prophecies of the Apparitions—encourage in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth a false sense of what is desirable or even possible. The magic of the Witches is thus an image of human moral disruption. Through their own uncertain nature, they demonstrate—and promote—the disruption in the world of the play. When Macbeth meets them a second time, he describes their capacity for disorder: they 'untie the winds, and let them fight Against the Churches . . . palaces and pyramids, do slope / Their heads to their foundations . . . Even till destruction sicken' (4.1.52-60). They declare that their activity comprises 'A deed without a name' (4.1.49). Their world is without definition; similarly, Macbeth's disordered sense of the world comes to encompass the assumption that 'Life's ... a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing- (5.5.24-28). 

Many people in Shakespeare's day believed in thereality of the supernatural world, but at the same time, a recognition that many folk beliefs were merely superstitions had arisen as well. Shakespeare's opinion on the subject cannot be determined, for his handling of the Witches is ambiguous. Banquo asks them, 'Are ye fantastical, or that indeed which outwardly ye show?' (1.3.53-54). After they leave, he wonders if he and Macbeth have 'eaten on the insane root' (1.3.84) and have simply imagined them. Their nature is never clearly stated. Moreover, the extent to which they have powers other than those of persuasion is also uncertain, which perhaps reflects—or exploits—the generally uncertain sense of such things in the playwright's original audiences. Shakespeare may have shared his audiences' ambivalence as to the supernatural, or he may simply have played on it to devise a dramatic grouping of characters. Despite a modern disbelief in the supernatural, we can respond to its dramatic use in Macbeth, and find in it a symbol of obscure regions of the human psyche. In this light, the Witches can be thought of as manifestations of Macbeth's ambition and guilt. That Banquo also sees them and Lady Macbeth accepts their reality does not argue against such an interpretation of Shakespeare's intentions; it merely points up the ambivalence of 17th-century attitudes towards the supernatural.  

Murderers are assassins recruited by Macbeth. In 3.1 the First Murderer and his accomplice, the Second Murderer, accept Macbeth's assignment to kill Banquo and Fleance. They are virtually indistinguishable from each other. Neither speaks much, although each makes a brief complaint (3.1.107-113) about the desperation of his unfortunate life and his determination to perform any deed that may improve his lot. In 3.3 the Murderers, assisted by the Third Murderer, undertake their commission. They cooly assault their targets and kill Banquo, though Fleance escapes. In 3.4 the First Murderer reports the deed succinctly to Macbeth. He takes pride in their fierceness and describes Banquo's wounds as 'twenty trenched gashes on his head; / The least a death . . .' (3.4.26-27). In 4.2 an unspecified number of Murderers, probably the First and Second, kill the son of Lady Macduff and chase her offstage where they kill her, as we learn in 4.3. Their cold-bloodedness is here particularly horrifying as one of them notes his victim's youth, calling the Son an 'egg' (4.2.82) as he kills him.  The Murderers are not distinct from each other as individuals. The First Murderer offers a pleasing description of a sunset in 3.3.5-7, but we do not imagine that he is a man of esthetic sensibility. He is merely a vessel for Shakespeare's poetic lyricism, which here helps to establish the eerie atmosphere of dusk for a scene that, in the playwright's theatre, was performed without modern stage lighting to set the mood.