BANQUO                                             To me you speak not.

                                        If you can look into the seeds of time

                                        And say which grain will grow and which will not,

                                        Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear

                                        Your favours nor your hate.

FIRST WITCH            Hail!

SECOND WITCH        Hail!

THIRD WITCH           Hail!

FIRST WITCH            Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.

SECOND WITCH        Not so happy, yet much happier.

THIRD WITCH           Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.

                                       So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!

FIRST WITCH            Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!                     (1.3.52-64)

Banquo’s not quite doing, what about me, what about ME, although there’s a touch of that; mostly, though, he’s interested in authentication, by seeing what the witches can promise him—anything like the same specifics they’ve just promised Macbeth? It’s an astonishingly vivid, odd conceit, looking into the seeds of time and say which grain will know and which will not. Tiny, inconsequential objects that, planted and nurtured, could grow into extraordinary things. (The conceit of planting and growing will return.) The idea of planting a seed in a word, the way in which ideas and actions can have their origin; the mind and the soul as variably fertile places. The parable of the sower lurks here: there’s a question not only of the nature of the seed, but the nature of the ground. Banquo says that he’s got nothing to lose; he doesn’t have Macbeth’s status, he can’t see that he can gain anything from the witches, and neither, he assumes, does he have any reason to upset them. He doesn’t fear them and he doesn’t want anything from them.

So now the witches go full-on sibyl. Another round of Hails! And then these prophecies which are paradoxical (or nonsensical), far knottier than what has been promised to Macbeth. Lesser than Macbeth, and greater. (What is greatness anyway? What does it look and feel like? That’s a question the play’s interested in. There was a parody of this and related concerns, too, in Twelfth Night: Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them…) Not so happy, yet much happier. Is this about happiness, contentment, gladness, or good fortune? Or both? (Or neither?) And what’s the time-frame? Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none. You won’t be a king yourself, but you shall beget kings. Your heirs will be kings. Banquo asked for clarification and confirmation, but got proper sibylline riddles, riddles doing really interesting things with time (among other things). In fact it seems as if the prophecies that the witches make for Macbeth are the straightest answers they give in the entire play…