Final answer:
The witches give Macbeth and Banquo their future titles to initiate the play's key conflicts. Their prophecies arouse Macbeth's ambition, pushing him towards a tragic path, while serving as a contrasting backdrop to Banquo's more measured response. These supernatural predictions underpin the play's themes of fate, ambition, and the supernatural's influence on human actions.
Step-by-step explanation:
The witches refer to Macbeth and Banquo with their future titles in Shakespeare's Macbeth as a means to set the play's primary conflicts into motion. Their prophecies are central to the play because they plant the seeds of ambition in Macbeth and foreshadow the rise of Banquo's lineage.
The witches' greeting to Macbeth as 'thane of Cawdor' and the prediction that he 'shall be king' stirs his latent ambition and leads to a tragic sequence of actions fueled by his desire to fulfill these prophecies.
Banquo's reaction is one of skepticism and he ponders the nature of the prophecies, questioning whether such predictions can be trusted. Although he shows surprise, he does not exhibit the same unchecked ambition as Macbeth.
The witches' announcement that 'thy children shall be kings' hints at the future conflict of lineage and inheritance, ultimately contrasting with Macbeth's path of destruction.
Shakespeare cleverly uses the witches to convey themes of fate, prophecy, and the influence of supernatural elements on human behavior, which drives the narrative of Macbeth. The ambiguous nature of the witches and their prophecies allow the audience to question the extent to which the characters' fates are predestined or self-fulfilled.