In this tragedy, things are seldom what they seem and almost every excruciating detail is left for the audience to wonder.
"Fair is foul and foul is fair." This famous Weird Sisters' quote simply and literally means that bad is good and good is bad, but it probes much deeper than that. It is an idea that can be twisted into knots and right-left-right turns, where nothing is the only something and things are never what they seem. The play is filled to the brim with ambiguities and double meanings, which commences with a single prophecy told to MacBeth by the witches. The day that he encounters them is "So foul and fair a day [he has] not seen." (Act I, Scene 3), which refers to the day being foul (the filthy weather) and also fair (MacDonald is defeated) at once. Banquo isn't happy, yet much happier. It is when you don't know whether that dagger is an apparation, a hallucination or a phantom...when Banquo's ghost is something too out of the ordinary to understand. Does that instantaneous ring of the bell at the climax of Duncan's murder send him up above or down below? One of Duncan's sons screams "Murder!" in his sleep, but the other one snickers quietly, and we don't know which was which. Is MacBeth actually sorry for his snowballing actions of deceit or is it just a facade? And then there is the faint...is Lady Macbeth's fainting spell honest or an act of distraction? The third murderer in unknown - many believe it is one of the witches. Who's side is Ross really on? Some believe Lady MacBeth committed suicide...others think MacBeth killed her himself. The mysterious letter that the Lady writes as she is sleepwalking is never explained. Is it a suicide note, or a love letter, or a confession?
All these little mini questions raise one very important one: Are we all just out to get one another, or are the hints that are hidden in the shadows ones that guide us to a greater life?
Is life really as meaningless as Macbeth describes, or will it reign over us like Malcom's did? This play's storyline may drive you nuts, maybe even insomniatic like MacBeth, but it's message is very simple: Any factor in life, whether it be a breakup, a fall, a promotion, a death, a change...anything can be either foul or fair, it is simply how we as the protagonists in our own story make it out to be.
