Deceitful Prophecies: Knots of Time in Shakespeare’s "Macbeth"

This paper aims at exploring the ways in which the prophecies of the Weird Sisters in Shakespeare’s Macbeth voice the collision between clashing perceptions of time at the turn of the 17th century. Emphasis is laid upon the fact that the witches’ prophecies lead to the Macbeths’ conspiracy by disclosing to the eponymous hero the full potential and consequences of a metaphorical assassination of cyclical time. Then, it is argued that the prophecies in Shakespeare’s Scottish play do not merely counter the circularity typical of the fading system embodied by Duncan with new way(s) to experience time, but in fact reveal to Macbeth how to overcome the fear of failure and death by reducing all time dimensions to an all-encompassing, devouring present. The main focus are the temporal structures in the Sisters’ prophecies, whereby past, present, and future conflate.