Not many heroes die while uttering a weather forecast, but that is the lot of Banquo in Macbeth whose final words are "It will rain tonight".
Macbeth himself, on the other hand, meets his untimely end when "Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane" with the immortal words: Lay on Macduff; And damned be him that first cries `Hold, enough!'
Thus it is that halfway down the following page Macduff astounds the remnants of the play's dramatis personae by entering stage right with the head of the unfortunate Macbeth.
According to the history books, this happened 940 years ago today - but not exactly in the way described by Shakespeare. History tells us that the real Macbeth was Lord of Moray, and by the standards of the time was a decent and an honourable man. He legitimately succeeded Duncan I as King of Scotland - not by stabbing the latter as he slept, but after killing him in battle in a fair fight.
Moreover, Macbeth's 17-year reign was a genial and a prosperous time for Scotland, and came to an end on August 15th, 1057, when Duncan's son, Malcolm - and not Macduff - assassinated poor Macbeth at Dunsinane, near Perth.
But Shakespeare was writing to please the tastes and opinions of his time, and this is evident, too, in the references to weather in the play. In one of the opening scenes, for example, the cut and thrust of battle is described by reference to the belief in vernal equinoctial gales.
As whence the sun `gins his reflection
Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,
So from that spring whence comfort seem'd to come
Discomfort swells.
There are also references to the belief that witches, along with their many other spiteful talents, could raise hailstorms, conjure up tempests, and command thunder and lightning to appear at the merest twitch of a magic broomstick. The coven in Macbeth, for example, devotes some thought to arranging the weather for its next appointment:
When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
As they sit around their steaming cauldron, they begin to vie with one another in terms of their prowess. "I'll give thee a wind" says one, while a second seems to have a virtual monopoly:
I myself have all the others,
And the very ports they blow,
All the quarters that they know I' the shipman's card.
But the third can better any of these claims by producing a gruesome souvenir of a gale she had prepared earlier:
Here I have a pilot's thumb,
Wreck'd as homeward he did come.