'When Shall Nosotros 3 Run across Over again' is the opening line of William Shakespeare's corking tragedy, Macbeth. Spoken by the First Witch, the line immediately ushers us into a world of witches, prophecy, and blackness magic, elements which Shakespeare probably chose to include because the new Rex of England, James I, had written censoriously well-nigh witchcraft in his book Demonologie.

The best way to analyse the meaning of the opening 'When Shall We 3 Run into Again' scene is to summarise information technology, stage past stage. Just commencement, here'south the scene:

Thunder and lightning. Enter three WITCHES

FIRST WITCH

When shall we 3 run into again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

SECOND WITCH

When the hurly-burly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.

THIRD WITCH

That volition be ere the set of sun.

Commencement WITCH

Where the place?

SECOND WITCH

Upon the heath.

3rd WITCH

There to meet with Macbeth.

First WITCH

I come, Graymalkin!

2d WITCH

Paddock calls.

THIRD WITCH

Betimes.

ALL

Fair is foul, and foul is fair
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Exeunt

At present, let'south get through the scene, fleck by scrap, and summarise what's going on, offering some words of analysis equally nosotros get.

Thunder and lightning. Enter 3 WITCHES

This scene, according to the stage directions, takes place in 'an open place'. Immediately, Shakespeare establishes an atmosphere of foreboding: the storm which begins Macbeth heralds the turbulent events which are going to follow, all of which the Witches have prophesied. From the get-go, things are foreign, out-of-kilter: fair is foul, and foul is fair, as the Witches volition afterward (collectively) say.

Beginning WITCH

When shall we iii run into again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

The Start Witch asks her two swain Witches when they will next go together. Non how the 2nd line, 'In thunder, lightning, or in pelting' is – equally Frank Kermode noted in his brilliant Shakespeare's Language – not really a choice, since thunder usually accompanies lightning and vice versa, and rain tends to accompany both.

As Kermode goes on to find, such a deceptive and subtle line, which seems to offer option that is in fact no choice, nicely introduces one of the recurrent themes of Macbeth, which is the extent to which the characters – and most of all, the title grapheme himself – are in control of their ain actions.

SECOND WITCH

When the hurly-burly's done,
When the battle'due south lost and won.

Equally Kermode also notes, battles which are lost past one side are also won by some other: every battle is both lost and won. More choices which turn out non to be choices, or mutually exclusive outcomes. Of course, the concluding battle between Macbeth and Macduff, which will run across Macbeth defeated, will be both lost by Macbeth and won past Macduff, and so this line is another which prefigures the play to come. But the 'battle' more directly referred to here is the one which Duncan and Macbeth discuss shortly after this scene – the battle at which the traitorous insubordinate, the Thane of Cawdor, is defeated and Macbeth wins the praise of the King, Duncan.

'Hurly-burly' ways tumult or uproar: the word may imply here the tumult of insurrection or revolt (the Thane of Cawdor who is executed for his treason against the King), but besides suggestions that modify is in the air and the kingdom is about to exist plunged into trigger-happy chaos.

The give-and-take 'washed' ('When the hurly-burly'due south done') will resonate throughout Macbeth: it will recur in Macbeth's own speeches ('If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well / It were washed rapidly') and it is in that location as a homophonic presence in both Duncan and Dunsinane. Here we have the word's first appearance, merely it will render over again and again throughout this short play.

THIRD WITCH

That will exist ere the fix of sun.

Things are moving swiftly: the Third Witch believes that the battle will be over before dusk.

Kickoff WITCH

Where the identify?

SECOND WITCH

Upon the heath.

THIRD WITCH

There to come across with Macbeth.

The Witches have already decided to approach Macbeth afterward the battle, and then they can tell him virtually the prophecy which foretells that he will be Rex of Scotland after Duncan.

FIRST WITCH

I come, Graymalkin!

Graymalkin or 'Grimalkin' in some versions literally means 'grey Mary', and is the name of the First Witch'due south cat. Witches' familiars are often cats in accounts of witchcraft, although 'grayness' suggests something slightly unlike from the usual clichéd blackness cat. This is one of the earliest uses of Graymalkin/Grimalkin in literature, although non quite the showtime: we can detect a Grimalkin in the remarkable 1550s work Beware the Cat, a London-set narrative which might exist described every bit the offset English novel. (See my AMAZON for more on this fascinating proto-Gothic text.)

2d WITCH

Paddock calls.

Paddock is another witches' familiar – in this case, a toad. The discussion 'paddock' is an old English dialect term for the toad.

3rd WITCH

Anon.

ALL

Fair is foul, and foul is fair
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Exeunt

The line 'Fair is foul, and foul is off-white' is almost proverbial, and was already so when Shakespeare wrote this line. In Edmund Spenser'southward The Faerie Queene from the 1590s, for instance, nosotros find the line, 'Then faire grew foule, and foule grew faire in sight'.

Once over again, here, we take the natural order being overturned and inverted, with the pair of opposites dissolving into i: off-white has been rendered foul, and foul has become off-white. Good and evil appear to have swapped places. Just as that battle is both lost and won, and so fair and foul are indistinguishable.

'When Shall We Three Run across Again' is amongst Shakespeare'due south more than famous opening lines, and for many it immediately conjures the world of witchcraft and prophecy in which the events of Macbeth take identify. But, maybe surprisingly, the scene has not proved universally popular with critics. The actor Harley Granville-Barker, an influential critic of Shakespeare's plays, went so far as to describe it as a 'pointless scene'.

Notwithstanding others take seen how the Witches' opening commutation sets the tone and mood for the play itself. Samuel Taylor Coleridge pointed out that this opening scene establishes an 'invocation' which is 'made at once to the imagination'. So it is a powerful opening scene, fifty-fifty though it works quite differently from many other opening scenes we find in Shakespeare.