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Plays › The Tragedy of Macbeth › First Witch

First Witch

The Tragedy of Macbeth · 23 speeches across 4 scenes

First of three Weird Sisters; a cryptic agent of fate who initiates Macbeth's downfall.

Who they are

Witch 1 is the leader of the trio, often speaking first and setting the rhythm of their incantations. She prophesies Macbeth’s rise to power and later his doom, serving as both catalyst and moral barometer of his ambition. Her arc moves from playful malevolence to grim authority, and she shares a tight, ritualistic bond with Witch 2 and Witch 3.

Playing them

Play her with a low, gravelly timbre and sudden shifts in tempo—languid in conspiracy, sharp in prophecy. Use physical stillness punctuated by jagged gestures; let her lines punch with eerie clarity. Tradition often uses hags with warts and tattered black rags, but modern productions may emphasize otherworldly elegance or grotesque vulnerability.

Appearance

Costume typically ragged and black, with wild hair and a staff. She may wear animal bones or iron trinkets to underscore her connection to storms and the uncanny.

Worth knowing

Shakespeare drew on Scottish folklore and Holinshed’s Chronicles, where the witches are ‘nymphs’ or ‘fairies.’ Witch 1 echoes classical Fates and early modern witch-trial depositions.

Where they appear

Play First Witch

Take the part and Yorick reads every other role aloud, following you line by line as you speak.

Rehearse Macbeth on your phone: App Store · Google Play

Shakespeare the way it was meant to be had — out loud

These plays were written to be performed, not silently read. Yorick is a rehearsal app that lets you perform them: you take a part in any of Shakespeare’s 38 plays, and Yorick reads every other role aloud, listens while you speak your lines, keeps your place, and prompts you the moment you dry.

It is built for the person who has to be off book by tech week — school and college productions, community theatre, festivals, drama students and classical auditions — and for anyone who wants to hear a scene rather than skim it. Alongside the performance you get a plain-English translation of every speech, scene context, performance notes, and the ability to ask about any line and get an answer that already knows the play, the scene and who is speaking.

The text is the public-domain Cambridge/Globe edition. Translations and notes are AI-generated rehearsal aids for actors and students, not a scholarly apparatus. Yorick runs in a browser with nothing to install, and on iPhone and Android.