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Most people in Shakespearian times were strong believers in witches, witchcraft, the supernatural, heaven and hell. One of the strongest believers was King James, and so William Shakespeare included them in many of his plays. The audiences also loved to watch his plays and were intrigued to see the story of Macbeth, a story of ambition and kingship where you have the witches foretelling the future followed by Macbeth and other characters playing it out. The phrase “fair is foul and foul is fair” is no exception to this as this is how the story becomes. Macbeth is the story of a man whose ambition to be king gets out of control. It shows the devastation that real power can cause when held by an untrustworthy person and the true nature of evil and its followers. It shows the effects of guilt and conscience, and their battle with ambition. The three witches are a gathering of old, deformed women stereotypical of what a Shakespearian audience would expect to see. Their language is very confusing with many oxymorons and contradictories. “Fair is foul and foul is fair”, “Lesser than Macbeth, and greater” (Act 1, Scene 3, Line 63) and “not so happy, yet much happier” (Act 1, Scene 3, Line 64) are examples of this.
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