The witches enter in the midst of 'thunder' as in the play's opening scene, the 'thunder' being incantatory. In the conversation that follows, we are made aware of the witches' preoccupations of mischief, apart from their vulgar pastimes like 'killing swine'. The First Witch ventilates with a lot of vile passion how she is going to cause harms to a sailor whose wife refused to give her chestnuts: ' I'll drain him dry as hay:/ Sleep shall neither night nor day/ Hang upon his pent-house lid;/....Though his bark cannot be lost,/ Yet it shall be tempest-tost'.
As the witches appear before Banquo and Macbeth, the former doubts their bonafides: 'So wither'd, and so wild in their attire,/ That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth'. They have strangely grotesque features like 'choppy finger', 'skinny lips' and beards. When the 'weird sisters' vanish, Banquo iterates their strangeness: ' The earth hath bubbles as the water has,/ And these are of them.....'
Thus a close look at the witches' appearance, their clothes, their gestures and language shows that they were instruments of evil/darkness.
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