Macbeth Supernatural Quotes: The Five You Actually Need for GCSE
If you search for Macbeth supernatural quotes, you will find pages listing thirty, forty, even sixty of them. That is not revision. That is a reading list. When you sit AQA English Literature Paper 1, the exam is closed book, and a small set of quotes you understand deeply will always beat a long list you half remember.
If what you actually want to know is what the supernatural in Macbeth means, here is the short version before we start: it gives Macbeth the idea, and it never once gives him the order. Hold on to that and half the essay writes itself.
So here are the five supernatural quotes we teach our students to master, chosen and checked by a qualified English teacher. For each one you get the technique Shakespeare is using, what you can actually argue with it in an essay, and the context that earns you marks. Together they run from the first line of the play to almost the last, which matters more than you might think. We will come back to that.
Why the supernatural mattered so much to Shakespeare's audience
To us, witches are Halloween costumes. To the audience watching Macbeth for the first time, they were real, dangerous, and close to home. King James I believed in witches and even wrote a book about them, and many of his subjects feared witchcraft as a genuine threat. On top of that, England was still shaken by the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which made "equivocation", the art of misleading people with words that are technically true, a talking point of the age.
Keep both facts in your pocket. They are the context (AO3) behind almost every supernatural moment in the play, and you will see them again below.
1. "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" analysis
"Fair is foul, and foul is fair: / Hover through the fog and filthy air."The Witches, Act 1, Scene 1. Tier: Essential.
The technique: paradox, plus alliteration. A paradox is a statement that contradicts itself, and here good ("fair") and bad ("foul") are swapped over. Alliteration is the repeating of the same sound at the start of nearby words, and the "f" of "fair", "foul", "fog" and "filthy" hisses through the line. Together they give the witches a sing-song chant that marks them out as unnatural against every human character in the play.
What you can argue. Right at the start, the witches warn us that good and bad will be mixed up in this play. Things will not be what they seem, and neither will people: Macbeth begins as a hero and becomes a killer. Their strange way of speaking sets them apart from everyone else on stage before they have done anything at all.
Context. King James I's belief in witches meant the opening scene would have unsettled the first audience, not amused it.
Where it links. Macbeth's very first line, "So foul and fair a day", echoes the witches' words before he has even met them, which lets you argue their influence reaches him from the start. It also opens up the whole appearance versus reality theme, explored in full in our Macbeth appearance vs reality quotes.
2. "All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!"
"All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!"The Third Witch, Act 1, Scene 3. Tier: Core.
The technique: repetition, in a pattern of three. Repetition is simply saying something more than once for effect. The witches greet Macbeth three times, each greeting larger than the last, and the pattern builds until the third one sounds like a certainty rather than a guess. "Hereafter" simply means in the future.
What you can argue. This is the quote for the fate versus free will argument. The prophecy gives Macbeth the idea, but it never tells him to murder anyone. He decides that himself. "Hereafter" is vague about how he will become king, so Macbeth fills the gap with murder. The supernatural tempts him; it does not force him.
Context. The witches deal in half-truths that mislead, which connects to equivocation, the big talking point after the 1605 Gunpowder Plot.
Where it links. The visions the witches show Macbeth in Act 4 work the same trick on a larger scale, and the whole question of fate versus choice runs from here to the end of the play. That same question of who really holds power drives our Macbeth power quotes.
3. "Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?"
"Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?"Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1. Tier: Core.
The technique: rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is one asked for effect rather than because anyone is going to answer it, and Macbeth asks this one alone on stage: is the floating dagger, pointing him toward Duncan's chamber, actually there?
What you can argue. This is the most useful ambiguity in the play. The dagger could be sent by the witches, or it could be his stressed, guilty mind imagining it. Shakespeare deliberately leaves it open, so you can argue it either way, and the strongest answers argue both. Whichever reading you choose, the dagger shows his mind is already fixed on the murder.
Context. The first audience might well have believed in real supernatural signs, which makes the moment genuinely frightening rather than just strange.
Where it links. Macbeth seeing Banquo's ghost later in the play raises exactly the same question, is this the supernatural or a guilty mind, so the two moments pair beautifully in a whole-text answer. The dagger also opens the door to the guilt theme, which we explore in our Macbeth guilt quotes.
4. "Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here."
"Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here."Lady Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5. Tier: Essential.
The technique: imperative verbs, plus direct address. Imperatives are command words, and "come" and "unsex me" are both orders. Direct address means speaking straight to someone, except that here she is not speaking to a person at all: she calls on evil spirits, asking them to strip away her femininity so she can be cruel.
What you can argue. The supernatural in Macbeth is not confined to a heath in the fog. It is invited into the Macbeths' own home. By calling on spirits for help, Lady Macbeth connects herself to the witches and their dark power, and you can argue she chooses that connection freely, which makes her more chilling than the witches themselves.
Context. An audience that expected wives to be gentle and obedient would have been shocked by a woman summoning spirits to make her cruel.
Where it links. This quote sits at the crossroads of the play: the supernatural, gender, and ambition all meet here, and her later breakdown shows the price she pays. It also pairs with our ambition quotes if the question asks how ambition takes hold.
5. "...this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen."
"...this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen."Malcolm, Act 5. Tier: Core.
The technique: metaphor, plus a comparison built into one word. Macbeth is not a real butcher, so the label is a metaphor for a killer who kills as a trade. "Fiend-like" then compares Lady Macbeth to a devil, with the "-like" ending doing the same job "as" or "like" does in a simile. These are almost the play's final words on them both.
What you can argue. "Fiend-like" links Lady Macbeth straight back to the evil spirits she called on in Act 1, so the play's judgement on her is a supernatural one: she asked to be joined to that darkness, and the label stuck. Malcolm's words also put the rightful order back in place after the chaos the Macbeths caused, letting you argue the play ends by containing the supernatural disorder it began with.
Context. Ending with a good, rightful king restored to the throne would please King James I and reassure the audience that order wins.
Where it links. Set this against "Come, you spirits" for a whole-play argument about Lady Macbeth, or against "Fair is foul" to show the disorder of the opening finally being answered.
How to use these five in the AQA exam
Paper 1, Section A gives you an extract and asks you to write about it and the play as a whole, from memory. That "play as a whole" part is where most students run out of material, and it is exactly why these five quotes were chosen. Look at where they sit: Act 1 Scene 1, Act 1 Scene 3, Act 1 Scene 5, Act 2 Scene 1, and Act 5. Whatever extract comes up, you can reach backwards or forwards to at least three of them.
A simple habit we teach: for every point you make about the extract, ask "where else in the play does this idea appear?" If the extract shows the witches, reach for the dagger or "fiend-like queen" to show the consequences. If the extract comes from late in the play, reach back to "Fair is foul" to show where it all began. Examiners reward that whole-text movement more than they reward a sixth, seventh or eighth quotation.
And that is the honest answer to how many quotes you need: for this theme, five, known deeply. Not fifty, known vaguely.
How to write a Grade 9 answer: the CLEAR method
Choosing the right five quotes is half the job. Turning one into a paragraph that climbs the mark scheme is the other half, and it is the part most students are never actually taught. At Clearmark we teach one method, built by Jack around exactly what AQA examiners reward, and it works for any quote in any text. It is called CLEAR:
- C, Claim. Make a clear point that directly answers the question.
- L, Locate. Use a relevant quotation or example from the play.
- E, Explore. Zoom in on the key words, methods or techniques in your evidence. This is your AO2.
- A, Analyse. Explain the effect on the reader or audience, and what Shakespeare might mean by it.
- R, Relate. Link to context, or to another part of the play, to deepen your analysis. This is where AO3 belongs.
Here is CLEAR in action on an AQA-style question, "Starting with this extract, explain how Shakespeare presents the supernatural in Macbeth," using the prophecy:
One warning examiners repeat every year: do not bolt context on as a final tacked-on sentence. With CLEAR, the R grows out of your point instead of sitting awkwardly at the end. Each quote above gives you the raw material, and CLEAR is how you turn it into a paragraph.
Frequently asked questions
How does Shakespeare present the supernatural in Macbeth?
As a force that tempts rather than controls. The witches' prophecy and Lady Macbeth's spirits plant ideas and invite evil in, but every murderous decision is made by a human being. Shakespeare leaves key moments, like the dagger, deliberately open, so the play keeps asking whether the supernatural is real, imagined, or both.
Are the witches to blame for Macbeth's downfall?
Partly at most. Their prophecy gives Macbeth the idea, but it never instructs him to kill, and "hereafter" says nothing about how he becomes king. Macbeth fills that gap with murder himself. The strongest essays weigh the witches' influence against Macbeth's own choices rather than picking one side.
Is the dagger in Macbeth real or imagined?
Shakespeare never tells us, and that is the point. It could be a supernatural sign sent by the witches or a hallucination produced by Macbeth's stressed, guilty mind. Either reading works in an essay, and acknowledging both is a top-band move.
How do you analyse "fair is foul, and foul is fair" in an essay?
Name the technique, then argue from it. It is a paradox: good and bad swap places, warning us from the first scene that nothing in this play will be what it seems. Strong answers link it forward, to Macbeth's echo "So foul and fair a day", to his own journey from hero to killer, and to the play's wider appearance versus reality theme, and add the context that King James I's audience feared witches as real.
Why does Macbeth begin with the witches?
So the supernatural frames everything that follows. "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" warns the audience in the very first scene that good and bad will be mixed up throughout the play, and Macbeth's first line, "So foul and fair a day", echoes the witches before he has even met them.
How many supernatural quotes do I need for GCSE?
The exam is closed book, so quality beats quantity. Five versatile quotes you understand deeply, spread across the whole play, will serve you better than a long list you half remember. The five on this page cover Act 1 to Act 5 between them.
How do you get a Grade 9 on the supernatural question?
Use a method for every paragraph instead of writing whatever comes to mind. At Clearmark we teach CLEAR: Claim (answer the question), Locate (a short quote), Explore (the key words and techniques, AO2), Analyse (the effect and Shakespeare's meaning), Relate (context or another part of the play, AO3). For this theme, keep returning to one line of argument: the supernatural tempts Macbeth, it never orders him.
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