: A Confessional Letter from Macbeth to A Dead Banquo Confiding in Banquo His Feelings About His Actions and Thinking About What Life Would Be like If They Had Never Met the Witches.

My dear friend Banquo,

After everything that has happened I feel that my time on earth is almost up and I will soon join you where ever you may be. I have been used and tricked and now I will pay the ultimate punishment for my ambition which drove me to this point.

I cannot help but wonder what would have happened, had we never been confronted by the three Weird Sisters on that dark heath on the night that we returned from battle. How different would our futures have been? They presented us with three prophecies which were unbelievable and yet they all came true. Thane of Glamis I already was, but the Thane Cawdor still lived and to become the king was just out of the question. But if they had not said it, would their prophecies have become true? Thane of Cawdor I did become, fate handed me that in a platter. Was it that prophecy becoming true that drove me to murder Duncan? Or was it rather the knowledge of what the witches had said and my ambition and belief in the prophecies that drove me to fulfil their next one of being “king hereafter”?

How could I be such a fool? Witches! Of all the words, witches? Why did I trust them? Their very appearance was unearthly and foul, but still I took their words to be the truth. The witches did not lie to me, but they did not tell me of the traps that lay behind their prophecies. Lust and ambition made me blind as I followed the path the witches had laid out for me, failing to notice the traps in between. Why did I have to go back to them a second time, to know more about a future which they foresaw? They gave me false confidence, which will ultimately result in my downfall.

O, how different life would have been if we had never met ‘them’. Perhaps I would have been king, but without the guilt that goes with getting it wrongly. Or perhaps my lady and I would happily be living as the Thanes