The Elizabethan stage practices of Shakespeare's time
would not have provided any information to the audience about weather (nor about time of
day, location, etc., for that matter). Information about the weather in
Macbeth comes from dialogue.
When the
witches say that fair is foul and foul is fair, they indicate a stormy day, or a day
involving some kind of bad or odd weather, unnatural weather; particularly when they
follow this line by referring to fog and filthy air. The refrain also meshes with the
choice of day the three shall meet again on as offered by the First Witch in line two of
the same scene: "In thunder, lightning, or in rain?" Notice no fair weather option is
offered.
Macbeth, or course, echoes the refrain just before
meeting the witches for the first time in Act 1.3, again highlighting the
weather.
More important than the physical atmosphere (the
weather), however, is the refrain's contribution to the ideas of reversal in the play.
Gender roles are reversed (Macbeth and his wife). Grass and hay eating horses become
cannibals. People that should be and appear to be loyal are not (Cawdor, Macbeth, Lady
Macbeth). Reversals, opposites are so common that even an honest and loyal thane like
Macduff is suspected of being what he's not (disloyal) by
Malcolm.
Little is as it should be in the play: what's
fair is foul and what's foul is fair.
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