ACT 1 SC 3:
MACBETH: “So foul and fair a day I have not seen.”

I’ve been thinking about this line a lot. What does Macbeth mean, why does he say it, and why did Shakespeare make this his first line in the play?

1/

Macbeth means that the day has been a good one but a dark one: a victory has been won, some reward or advancement is surely heading his way, Duncan’s enemies are vanquished. But it was also a day of bloodshed, with allies turned traitor, and the weather’s rubbish.

2/

Worth noting that FAIR is a key Shakespeare word but it doesn’t, seemingly, have the sense of “just” or “equitable”. Although that meaning would fit here, to Shakespeare FAIR always means beautiful, pleasing, good.

3/

The audience recognises immediately the echo of the witches: “fair is foul and foul is fair” (a construction Shakespeare borrowed from classical literature I think).

Except, CRUCIAL DIFF: To the witches foul IS fair, but to Macbeth they are still two different things.

4/

Macbeth’s words might signal the encroaching influence of the supernatural but they affirm that his morality is still intact: he can still distinguish the goodness of what has passed from the bloodshed required to achieve it.

5/

Macbeth’s story, of course, is of a man who abandons his moral compass. It’s significant that he’s talking to Banquo, against whom Macbeth’s own moral decay is contrasted. It is Banquo who calls the witches’ prophecy “fair” but also says M has “played foully” to win power.

6/

The knowledge that the witches are waiting creates dramatic irony, as does recognition of the tragic genre itself, in which a hero’s downfall often commences at the moment of his seeming triumph.

7/

The line also links to what we hear in the report to Duncan in 1.2: this is a world in which bloodshed and violence are celebrated so long as they are in the service of King and Country. Macbeth is not horrified by this type of violence. In fact he’s good at it.

8/

The bloodshed and littered corpses on the battlefield don’t preclude the day from being a “fair” one.

9/

So in these few words we learn a lot about Macbeth’s character, his moral sense and what might lie in store for him.

Now... ”I have not seen”...

10/

Macbeth is a play fixated on sight and seeing: “the eye wink at the hand”, “filthy witness”, “pluck out mine eyes”, “show his eyes and grieve his heart”.

Losing clear sight indicates a fractured mind. Witnessing violence can cause psychological damage.

11/

So it’s significant that Shakespeare marks Macbeth’s first appearance with an ambiguity over what he has and hasn’t witnessed, using “I have not seen” to describe something he is, in fact, seeing.

12/

The phrase adds another layer of foreshadowing of Macbeth’s downfall.

Shakespeare was quite the writer.

13/

It’s a pleasure of Shakespeare’s writing — and all good writing, really — that lines and exchanges that flash by the audience while they’re still trying to orientate themselves prove to be thematically rich on second encounter.

Night all.

14/14