When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When will we three meet again— in thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When are we three meeting again? In a storm? Thunder, lightning, all that?
when we meeting thunder lightning rain when
When the hurlyburly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.
When the commotion's finished, when the battle's lost and won.
When all the chaos is done. You know—when the battle's over, someone's lost, someone's won.
after the chaos battle = lost and won that's when
That will be ere the set of sun.
That will be before the sun sets.
Yeah, before sunset.
before sun down
Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in iambic pentameter — da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM — a rhythm that unconsciously matches the human heartbeat and the natural stress pattern of English speech. When characters speak in iambic pentameter, they sound, at some subliminal level, human.
The Witches don't speak iambic. They speak trochaic tetrameter: DA-da DA-da DA-da DA-da. 'WHEN shall WE three MEET a-GAIN.' The stress falls on the first syllable, not the second — a rhythmic inversion that makes the verse sound insistent, mechanical, incantatory, and wrong. It's the heartbeat reversed.
This is one of Shakespeare's most sophisticated technical choices. He's not just labeling the Witches as supernatural through stage directions or costumes — he's built their unnaturalness into the sound of their speech. When you hear them, something in your body knows the rhythm is off before your mind has processed why.
The meter also connects them to a tradition of magical and ritual speech: charms, curses, and spells in Elizabethan literature frequently used trochaic patterns precisely because the reversal of normal rhythm was associated with reversal of natural order. The Witches' meter is their magic. They don't cast spells with special words — their words are already spells, structurally.
Where the place?
Where's the place?
Where, then?
where tho
Upon the heath.
On the heath.
Out on the heath.
heath
There to meet with Macbeth.
There to meet with Macbeth.
That's where we'll meet Macbeth.
gonna meet macbeth there
I come, Graymalkin!
I'm coming, Graymalkin!
I'm here, Graymalkin!
coming graymalkin
When Shakespeare wrote Macbeth (probably 1606), 'equivocation' was not just a rhetorical term — it was a flashpoint political controversy. The Gunpowder Plot had been discovered the year before (November 1605), and in the subsequent trial of the Jesuit priest Henry Garnet, the doctrine of 'equivocation' — answering truthfully in a technically correct but deliberately misleading way to avoid incriminating oneself — became a national scandal.
Garnet had written a treatise defending equivocation: a Catholic under oath could give a false external answer while maintaining the true answer mentally, and this was not lying. The Protestant establishment was furious. James I, who was almost certainly killed in the Gunpowder Plot, found the doctrine both dangerous and contemptible.
Shakespeare drops the word 'equivocator' into the Porter's speech in 2-3, but the concept saturates the whole play from Scene 1. The Witches are equivocators: 'lesser than Macbeth, and greater' (1-3); 'none of woman born shall harm Macbeth' (4-1); 'Macbeth shall never vanquished be until / Great Birnam Wood... shall come against him' (4-1). Every prophecy is technically true. Every prophecy is devastatingly false in the way Macbeth understands it. The Witches speak the doctrine of equivocation made supernatural — and Macbeth, like every equivocation victim, only understands the deception at the moment it's too late.
Paddock calls.
Paddock calls.
Paddock's calling.
paddock calling
Anon.
Coming soon.
I'm coming.
yeah
Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
Good is foul, and foul is good: We hover through the fog and filthy air.
Everything's backwards here. What looks good is rotten—what looks rotten might be true. We drift through the mist and the stink.
fair is foul foul is fair we drift the fog the filth everything backwards
The Reckoning
The shortest scene in Macbeth is also the most efficient. The Witches don't explain themselves or each other — they simply name where they're going and when. The battle currently raging is meaningless to them. They'll find Macbeth when it's lost and won. What matters isn't the outcome; it's who they'll meet afterward. The closing couplet — 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair: / Hover through the fog and filthy air' — doesn't just describe the weather. It announces the epistemological terms of everything that follows: appearances will lie, virtue will come to ruin, evil will wear a good face. The audience is handed a decoder ring in the opening minute and then watches the rest of the play trying to use it.
If this happened today…
Think of it as a pre-meeting calendar invite with no subject line, sent by three accounts no one recognizes, confirming a call that you never requested. Location: 'the heath.' Time: 'when the hurlyburly's done.' Who invited you? Unclear. What's on the agenda? You'll find out when you arrive. The meeting is already scheduled. You're already going.