'When Shall Nosotros 3 Meet Again' is the opening line of William Shakespeare's great tragedy, Macbeth. Spoken past the Showtime Witch, the line immediately ushers us into a world of witches, prophecy, and blackness magic, elements which Shakespeare probably chose to include because the new King of England, James I, had written censoriously about witchcraft in his book Demonologie.

The best way to analyse the meaning of the opening 'When Shall We Three Come across Again' scene is to summarise it, stage by stage. But first, here's the scene:

Thunder and lightning. Enter three WITCHES

Offset WITCH

When shall we three see again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

2nd WITCH

When the hurly-burly's washed,
When the battle'due south lost and won.

THIRD WITCH

That volition exist ere the prepare of sun.

FIRST WITCH

Where the identify?

2nd WITCH

Upon the heath.

Tertiary WITCH

There to come across with Macbeth.

Beginning WITCH

I come up, Graymalkin!

SECOND WITCH

Paddock calls.

Tertiary WITCH

Betimes.

ALL

Fair is foul, and foul is fair
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Exeunt

Now, let's go through the scene, bit by flake, and summarise what's going on, offering some words of analysis as nosotros go.

Thunder and lightning. Enter 3 WITCHES

This scene, according to the stage directions, takes place in 'an open place'. Immediately, Shakespeare establishes an atmosphere of foreboding: the storm which begins Macbeth heralds the turbulent events which are going to follow, all of which the Witches have prophesied. From the outset, things are strange, out-of-kilter: fair is foul, and foul is fair, as the Witches will later (collectively) say.

Get-go WITCH

When shall nosotros 3 meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

The First Witch asks her two beau Witches when they will next get together. Non how the second line, 'In thunder, lightning, or in rain' is – as Frank Kermode noted in his vivid Shakespeare'southward Language – non really a choice, since thunder commonly accompanies lightning and vice versa, and rain tends to accompany both.

Equally Kermode goes on to find, such a deceptive and subtle line, which seems to offer choice that is in fact no pick, nicely introduces one of the recurrent themes of Macbeth, which is the extent to which the characters – and most of all, the title grapheme himself – are in control of their own deportment.

2nd WITCH

When the hurly-burly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.

Every bit Kermode as well notes, battles which are lost past 1 side are also won by another: every battle is both lost and won. More choices which turn out non to exist choices, or mutually sectional outcomes. Of course, the final boxing betwixt Macbeth and Macduff, which volition see Macbeth defeated, will exist both lost by Macbeth and won by Macduff, so this line is another which prefigures the play to come. Just the 'battle' more directly referred to hither is the 1 which Duncan and Macbeth hash out before long after this scene – the battle at which the traitorous insubordinate, the Thane of Cawdor, is defeated and Macbeth wins the praise of the King, Duncan.

'Hurly-burly' means tumult or uproar: the word may imply hither the tumult of coup or defection (the Thane of Cawdor who is executed for his treason against the King), simply also suggestions that change is in the air and the kingdom is about to be plunged into violent anarchy.

The word 'done' ('When the hurly-burly's done') will resonate throughout Macbeth: information technology will recur in Macbeth's own speeches ('If information technology were washed when 'tis done, then 'twere well / It were washed quickly') and it is there as a homophonic presence in both Duncan and Dunsinane. Hither we have the word's starting time appearance, but it volition return again and again throughout this short play.

THIRD WITCH

That will be ere the set of sun.

Things are moving swiftly: the Third Witch believes that the boxing will be over earlier sunset.

Starting time WITCH

Where the place?

2d WITCH

Upon the heath.

Tertiary WITCH

There to encounter with Macbeth.

The Witches accept already decided to arroyo Macbeth afterwards the battle, so they can tell him about the prophecy which foretells that he will exist Rex of Scotland after Duncan.

Outset WITCH

I come, Graymalkin!

Graymalkin or 'Grimalkin' in some versions literally ways 'grayness Mary', and is the name of the First Witch'southward cat. Witches' familiars are often cats in accounts of witchcraft, although 'gray' suggests something slightly different from the usual clichéd black cat. This is one of the earliest uses of Graymalkin/Grimalkin in literature, although not quite the start: we can find a Grimalkin in the remarkable 1550s piece of work Beware the Cat, a London-set narrative which might be described as the first English language novel. (See my AMAZON for more on this fascinating proto-Gothic text.)

2d WITCH

Paddock calls.

Paddock is another witches' familiar – in this case, a toad. The word 'paddock' is an erstwhile English dialect term for the toad.

Third WITCH

Anon.

ALL

Fair is foul, and foul is fair
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Exeunt

The line 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair' is almost proverbial, and was already so when Shakespeare wrote this line. In Edmund Spenser'southward The Faerie Queene from the 1590s, for instance, we detect the line, 'Then faire grew foule, and foule grew faire in sight'.

Once once again, here, we have the natural order being overturned and inverted, with the pair of opposites dissolving into ane: fair has been rendered foul, and foul has become fair. Good and evil appear to have swapped places. Just as that boxing is both lost and won, so fair and foul are duplicate.

'When Shall We Three Encounter Once again' is among Shakespeare'southward more famous opening lines, and for many it immediately conjures the world of witchcraft and prophecy in which the events of Macbeth have place. Simply, perhaps surprisingly, the scene has not proved universally popular with critics. The actor Harley Granville-Barker, an influential critic of Shakespeare's plays, went and then far as to describe it as a 'pointless scene'.

Yet others accept seen how the Witches' opening commutation sets the tone and mood for the play itself. Samuel Taylor Coleridge pointed out that this opening scene establishes an 'invocation' which is 'fabricated at once to the imagination'. Then it is a powerful opening scene, fifty-fifty though it works quite differently from many other opening scenes we find in Shakespeare.