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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Macbeth, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ambition
Fate
Violence
Nature and the Unnatural
Manhood
Summary
Analysis
As a storm rages, three witches appear, speaking in rhyming, paradoxical couplets: "when the battle's lost and won" (1.1.4); "fair is foul, and foul is fair" (1.1.10). They agree to meet again on the heath (plain) when the battle now raging ends. There they'll meet Macbeth.
The witches' rhyming speech makes them seem inhuman, ominous, and paranormal, which, in fact, they are.
Themes
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