Fate plays a large role in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Not only do the weird sisters use it towreak havoc among the Scottish nobility, but many people throughout the play try totempt fate. Macbeth does it, as does Lady Macbeth. Then, later in the play, evenMalcolm, Macduff and the other revolutionaries try to alter fate. Fate can be manythings to many different people. To those who believe that fate is an all-encompassingaspect of God, fate is merely an excuse for one's deeds. But to Macbeth and the witches,fate was something much more complicated.To the weird sisters, fate is not something to be overly concerned with. However, theirsuperior, Hecate, obviously thinks that it was important enough to discipline the weirdsisters verbally for abusing it. To the weird sisters, fate, and for that matter it seems,time, is merely as water and bread are to Macbeth: they exist and can be altered. Thisview of fate is not as ambivalent as the other view, but is more a view along the lines ofThomas Aquinas or Kurt Vonnegut. According to Aquinas, time is something that youboth exist in and are affected by or you not. One is either subject to the limitations oftime or one is not. For instance, God is outside the normal limitations of time and istherefore immortal. In Macbeth, it seems, the witches are a transient hybrid of those intime and those not in time. That is to say, they can travel in and out of time at will. Thisability allows them to both see the future and to change its very course. This of courseproves to be an illogical paradox when examined analytically, but Shakespeare's greatwork is brimming with paradoxes ("Fair is foul, and foul is fair" I.i.11). This ability leads to some interesting and important moments in the play. For one, thewitches seem to already know the consummation of both Macbeth and Banquo'srespective fates. However, they, for some reason unbeknownst to the audience, deem itnecessary to interfere with this fate and tell Mac...
