Macbeth Quote Analysis

Macbeth speaks his first line in the play, commenting on the day's strange mixture of victory in battle and ominous weather, just after the witches have finished their ritual.

Macbeth's pairing of opposites—"foul and fair"—directly echoes the witches' chant from Scene 1 ("Fair is foul"), linking his language to theirs before he even knows they exist. The alliteration binds the two contradictory terms together sonically, making them feel inseparable rather than opposed. This linguistic mirroring implies that Macbeth already inhabits the witches' moral confusion, where good and evil cannot be clearly distinguished.

Use this to argue that Macbeth's corruption isn't caused by the witches meeting him—his mind already works like theirs, suggesting he's susceptible to their influence because he already perceives the world in their destabilizing terms.