'When Shall We Three Meet Again' is the opening line of William Shakespeare's great tragedy, Macbeth. Spoken by the First Witch, the line immediately ushers the states into a world of witches, prophecy, and black magic, elements which Shakespeare probably chose to include considering the new Rex of England, James I, had written censoriously about witchcraft in his volume Demonologie.

The all-time way to analyse the meaning of the opening 'When Shall We Iii Meet Once more' scene is to summarise information technology, stage by stage. But starting time, here's the scene:

Thunder and lightning. Enter iii WITCHES

Starting time WITCH

When shall we three run across over again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

2nd WITCH

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

Third WITCH

That volition be ere the set up of sun.

FIRST WITCH

Where the place?

SECOND WITCH

Upon the heath.

Third WITCH

There to meet with Macbeth.

FIRST WITCH

I come, Graymalkin!

SECOND WITCH

Paddock calls.

Third WITCH

Betimes.

ALL

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

Exeunt

Now, allow's go through the scene, bit by chip, and summarise what's going on, offering some words of analysis as we go.

Thunder and lightning. Enter three WITCHES

This scene, co-ordinate to the phase 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 foreign, out-of-kilter: fair is foul, and foul is fair, every bit the Witches will later (collectively) say.

FIRST WITCH

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

The Offset Witch asks her two boyfriend Witches when they will next gather. Non how the 2nd line, 'In thunder, lightning, or in rain' is – every bit Frank Kermode noted in his brilliant Shakespeare'south Language – non really a choice, since thunder usually accompanies lightning and vice versa, and rain tends to accompany both.

Every bit Kermode goes on to observe, such a deceptive and subtle line, which seems to offering selection that is in fact no choice, nicely introduces one of the recurrent themes of Macbeth, which is the extent to which the characters – and well-nigh of all, the title character himself – are in command of their own actions.

2d WITCH

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

As Kermode also notes, battles which are lost by ane side are also won by another: every battle is both lost and won. More choices which plow out not to exist choices, or mutually exclusive outcomes. Of form, the final battle between Macbeth and Macduff, which will run across Macbeth defeated, will be both lost past Macbeth and won by Macduff, and then this line is another which prefigures the play to come. But the 'battle' more straight referred to here is the one which Duncan and Macbeth discuss shortly after this scene – the battle at which the traitorous rebel, the Thane of Cawdor, is defeated and Macbeth wins the praise of the King, Duncan.

'Hurly-burly' means tumult or uproar: the discussion may imply here the tumult of insurrection or revolt (the Thane of Cawdor who is executed for his treason against the Male monarch), but also suggestions that change is in the air and the kingdom is nigh to exist plunged into violent anarchy.

The word 'washed' ('When the hurly-burly's done') will resonate throughout Macbeth: it will recur in Macbeth'southward ain speeches ('If it were done when 'tis done, and then 'twere well / It were done quickly') and it is in that location as a homophonic presence in both Duncan and Dunsinane. Here we have the give-and-take's get-go advent, but information technology will return again and once again throughout this short play.

Tertiary WITCH

That will be ere the set of sun.

Things are moving swiftly: the Third Witch believes that the boxing will exist over earlier dusk.

FIRST WITCH

Where the place?

SECOND WITCH

Upon the heath.

THIRD WITCH

There to see with Macbeth.

The Witches have already decided to approach Macbeth after the battle, so they can tell him about the prophecy which foretells that he will be King of Scotland later Duncan.

Commencement WITCH

I come up, Graymalkin!

Graymalkin or 'Grimalkin' in some versions literally means 'grey Mary', and is the proper name of the Starting time Witch's cat. Witches' familiars are oft cats in accounts of witchcraft, although 'gray' suggests something slightly different from the usual clichéd black true cat. This is ane of the earliest uses of Graymalkin/Grimalkin in literature, although not quite the first: nosotros tin find a Grimalkin in the remarkable 1550s work Beware the Cat, a London-set up narrative which might exist described as the commencement English language novel. (See my AMAZON for more than on this fascinating proto-Gothic text.)

SECOND WITCH

Paddock calls.

Paddock is another witches' familiar – in this instance, a toad. The discussion 'paddock' is an quondam English dialect term for the toad.

3rd WITCH

Betimes.

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 nearly proverbial, and was already then when Shakespeare wrote this line. In Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene from the 1590s, for instance, we detect the line, 'Then faire grew foule, and foule grew faire in sight'.

Once again, here, we have the natural social club being overturned and inverted, with the pair of opposites dissolving into 1: fair has been rendered foul, and foul has get off-white. Expert and evil appear to have swapped places. Just as that battle is both lost and won, and so fair and foul are indistinguishable.

'When Shall Nosotros Three Run across Once again' is among Shakespeare'due south more famous opening lines, and for many it immediately conjures the world of witchcraft and prophecy in which the events of Macbeth have identify. But, perhaps surprisingly, the scene has non proved universally popular with critics. The actor Harley Granville-Barker, an influential critic of Shakespeare's plays, went so far equally to describe information technology as a 'pointless scene'.

Yet others have 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 'made at once to the imagination'. So it is a powerful opening scene, even though it works quite differently from many other opening scenes nosotros find in Shakespeare.