Spoilers and the Scoreboard
Pencils ready.
Fair warning: this is a full summary with every spoiler, the ending included, of William Shakespeare’s play. And here is the question I wanted answered. Did the witches ever lie to Macbeth? I read the whole play and counted nine separate predictions. Five come true on stage. Four are never settled. In my reading, not one of the nine is a flat lie.
We walk the play one act at a time. For each prediction I give you when it is made, when it pays off, and what Macbeth does because of it. After the five acts you get two tables built from the text: a body count by act, and a map of who knew what. The text is Project Gutenberg ebook fifteen thirty three, by the Project Gutenberg Shakespeare Team, and every act and scene number follows that edition.
Act One, Two Truths Come Quick
Act one opens on three witches arranging to meet Macbeth on the heath. Then we cut to a camp, where a bleeding soldier tells King Duncan that Macbeth has beaten the rebel Macdonwald and the Norwegian army. Duncan strips the traitor Thane of Cawdor of his title and sends it to Macbeth. Hold on to that detail, because it happens before the witches say a word to him.
Act one, scene three. The witches hail Macbeth as Thane of Glamis, which he already is, then Thane of Cawdor, then king hereafter. To Banquo they say three things: lesser than Macbeth and greater, not so happy yet much happier, and he shall get kings though he be none. That is five predictions in one scene. Then Ross and Angus walk in with the title of Cawdor.
So the first prediction pays off in the same scene it was made. Banquo asks, can the devil speak true? Macbeth, in an aside, says two truths are told. In scene four Duncan names his son Malcolm heir, and Macbeth calls that a step he must fall down or leap over. In scene seven his wife talks him out of backing off, and the plan is set: drug the two chamberlains and blame them.
Act Two, The King Is Dead
Act two, scene one. Banquo cannot sleep, and says he dreamed of the three Weird Sisters. Macbeth says he does not think of them. Then he sees a dagger in the air, and a bell rings. In scene two Macbeth kills Duncan offstage and comes back still holding the daggers. His wife takes them back and smears the sleeping chamberlains with blood.
In scene three a drunken porter finally opens the gate. Macduff finds the body and rings the alarm. Macbeth says he killed the two chamberlains in a rage, which means nobody can question them. Duncan’s sons slip away, Malcolm to England and Donalbain to Ireland, and running makes them look guilty.
Scene four is the payoff. Macduff tells Ross that Macbeth is already named king and has gone to Scone to be invested. That is the second prediction, king hereafter, made in act one, scene three. It pays off in act two, scene four, eight scenes later. The price in this act is three deaths: Duncan and the two chamberlains.
Act Three, Fear of Banquo
Act three belongs to a prophecy that is not Macbeth’s. Banquo opens scene one alone. He says Macbeth now has everything the Weird Women promised, and he fears it was got foully. Then he wonders whether the promise about his own sons might hold too. He tells no one on stage, but Macbeth is already afraid of him.
Macbeth, alone in the same scene, says it plainly. If the witches are right, he murdered Duncan only to make Banquo’s children kings. So he hires two murderers, and in scene three they ambush Banquo and his son Fleance on the road. Banquo dies. Fleance escapes, and the prediction about Banquo’s sons stays open.
At the banquet in scene four, Banquo’s ghost sits in Macbeth’s own seat, and only Macbeth sees it. The lords are sent home. Macbeth says he is in blood stepped in so far that going back would be as hard as going on, and he will visit the Weird Sisters again in the morning. In scene five their mistress, Hecate, scolds them for dealing with him without her, and plans illusions to draw him on.
Act Four, The Cauldron
Act four, scene one, the cave. The witches boil their cauldron, and Macbeth demands answers. Three apparitions rise. An armed head says beware Macduff, the Thane of Fife. A bloody child says none of woman born shall harm Macbeth. A crowned child holding a tree says he will never be beaten until Great Birnam Wood comes to high Dunsinane hill. Those are predictions six, seven and eight.
Macbeth thanks the first, then decides to kill Macduff anyway, to make assurance double sure. Of the third he says that will never be, because no one can make a forest pull up its roots. Then he asks whether Banquo’s children will rule, and the witches show him a line of eight kings, with Banquo smiling and pointing at them. That is prediction nine.
Lennox brings word that Macduff has fled to England. Macbeth orders his castle seized and his family killed. In scene two murderers reach Lady Macduff and her young son, and the boy is stabbed on stage. In scene three, in England, Malcolm tests Macduff by pretending to be worse than Macbeth, and then Ross tells Macduff that his wife and children are dead.
Act Five, The Payoffs
Act five starts with a doctor and a gentlewoman watching Lady Macbeth sleepwalk, rubbing her hands and talking about the old man’s blood, and about the Thane of Fife’s wife. Meanwhile Macbeth clings to the apparitions. In scene three he says he cannot fear until Birnam Wood moves to Dunsinane, and that no man born of woman can hurt him.
In scene four Malcolm’s army reaches Birnam Wood, and he tells every soldier to cut down a branch and carry it. In scene five Macbeth is told the queen is dead, and answers with tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Then a messenger says the wood has begun to move. Macbeth starts to doubt what he calls the equivocation of the fiend. Birnam pays off seven scenes after it was promised.
In scene seven Macbeth kills young Siward and says, thou wast born of woman. In scene eight Macduff faces him and says he was untimely ripped from his mother’s womb. Macbeth says the witches palter with us in a double sense, but he still refuses to yield. Macduff walks back on with his head. Malcolm is hailed King of Scotland, and Fleance is never seen again.
The Prophecy Scoreboard
Here is the tracker in one place. Five predictions close on stage. Cawdor, in act one, scene three. King, in act two, scene four. Birnam Wood, in act five, scene five. And two in act five, scene eight: beware Macduff, and none of woman born, which holds only because Macduff was not born the usual way.
Four stay open when the play ends. Banquo’s three, lesser and greater, not so happy yet happier, and kings, plus the line of eight kings in the cave. Fleance lives, but the play never shows him again, or any king after him. In my reading, the story stops exactly where that prediction would have to be tested.
Three promises lead straight to killings: king to Duncan, Banquo’s line to Banquo, and the Macduff warning to the massacre at Fife. Nothing in the text has the witches tell him to kill. The closest is the second apparition saying be bloody, bold and resolute. In my reading, every killing is Macbeth’s choice.
The Body Count by Act
Now the body count. My rule: every person the play says dies in its story, named or counted, seen or only reported. Soldiers in battle and the unnumbered servants at Fife are left out. Act one has two. Macdonwald, killed by Macbeth in the war, and the Thane of Cawdor, executed. Act two has three: Duncan and the two chamberlains. Act three has one, Banquo.
Act four has two named deaths, Macduff’s son and Lady Macduff. The text adds servants and other children at Fife without giving a number, so they stay out of my count. Act five has three. Lady Macbeth, reported dead and thought to have taken her own life. Young Siward, killed by Macbeth. And Macbeth himself. The total is eleven.
Who did it? Macbeth killed five with his own hand: Macdonwald, Duncan, the two chamberlains and young Siward. Three more died on his orders: Banquo, Lady Macduff and her son. Duncan ordered Cawdor’s death, and Macduff kills Macbeth. Only three of the eleven happen in front of us: Banquo, Macduff’s son, and young Siward.
Who Knew What
The last table is a map of who knew what. The prophecies first. Macbeth and Banquo hear the witches together in act one. Lady Macbeth reads about them in his letter. The apparitions in act four are Macbeth’s alone. When he asks Lennox whether he saw the Weird Sisters, Lennox says no.
Duncan’s killing is known for certain by two people, Macbeth and his wife. Banquo suspects, and says so only to himself. Macduff skips the crowning and the feast, and by act four he calls Macbeth a tyrant. In my reading, Lennox hints at it in act three, scene six. The doctor and the gentlewoman hear pieces of it in the sleepwalking.
Banquo’s murder is known to Macbeth and the murderers. Lady Macbeth is told to be innocent of the knowledge until she can applaud the deed, and by act five she says Banquo is buried. The massacre at Fife is ordered in front of Lennox, and Macduff learns of it only from Ross. In my reading, after Duncan, Macbeth stops sharing.
What the Count Adds Up To
So what does the tracker say? In my reading, the witches never tell Macbeth a flat lie. They tell him true things in the order that tempts him most, and he supplies the murders. Banquo warns about exactly this in act one: the instruments of darkness tell us truths to win us to our harm. That is an opinion, and a play lets you argue it either way.
If you want to read it yourself, the Project Gutenberg text is free, and the whole play runs about sixteen thousand spoken words by my count. Check act and scene numbers against your edition, because editions can number scenes differently. Subscribe, tap like, and tell me in the comments which prediction you would have ignored. The full tracker is on book explained dot com, and the link is in the description.
