"Fair is Foul, Foul is Fair".Act 1

"Fair is Foul, Foul is Fair" are the
very first words uttered by the witches in the play Macbeth in Act 1 scene 1.
They strike the key-note of the play, in which the values are all topsy-turvy
and in which the chief protagonist, like Milton's Satan make evil their
good.

The perversion of values and ideals is apparent in
their own deformity - the witches should be women but their beards deny it. Their
doctrine reverses the natural order of things.

"Fair is
Foul, Foul is Fair" is the Satanic principle of 'Evil be thou my good'. It echoes in
Macbeth's first words "So foul and fair a day I have not seen". He
goes on to adopt it in order to gain the throne, and then finds that he cannot escape
from it.

The confusion of 'fair' with the 'foul' is the
play's constant theme. It is emphasised by the heavy irony of Duncan's misjudgement of
the two Thanes of Cawdor and, in contrast, by his son's elaborate testing of
Macduff.

The first part of the witches' jingle "Fair is
Foul" is true because what should have been 'fair' - kingship - becomes 'foul', polluted
by the means by which it was obtained.

These words "Fair
is Foul, Foul is Fair" are a stroke of genius. They suggest that the the world of this
play is the world of distorted values. Macbeth is guided by deceptive apparitions and
hallucinations. His moral sense becomes as confused as are his physical senses when he
cannot distingush between the real and the unreal dagger. It is the latter that directs
him to the murder - he follows unreality.

Nature is foul
from the beginning to the end and the foul in nature closely corresponds to the foul or
evil in the heart of its hero. Macbeth the hero turns Macbeth the villain and commits
the most foul deeds. nature, too, is foul as if in harmony with human guilt and
villainy.