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What is the meaning of "juggling fiends" in Macbeth?

Macbeth is beginning to realize that the three witches have been deceiving him since he first encountered them. Like jugglers, they have kept changing their forecasts in order create confusion. This is particularly apparent when the Second Apparition they raise in Act IV, Scene 1 tells him that no man of woman born can overcome him in hand-to-hand battle--and then Macbeth finds himself confronted by the one man he has been avoiding out of a...

Macbeth is beginning to realize that the three witches have been deceiving him since he first encountered them. Like jugglers, they have kept changing their forecasts in order create confusion. This is particularly apparent when the Second Apparition they raise in Act IV, Scene 1 tells him that no man of woman born can overcome him in hand-to-hand battle--and then Macbeth finds himself confronted by the one man he has been avoiding out of a sense of guilt, and that man tells him:



Despair thy charm.
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripped.



Shakespeare wanted to portray Macbeth, his hero, as courageous and powerful in spite of all his obvious faults. The playwright makes it clear that Macduff would never have been able to beat Macbeth were it not for the fact that Macbeth has become demoralized as a result of the treachery of the witches. When he learns that Macduff was born of a crude Caesarian operation, he realizes that his defeat is inevitable. He tells Macduff:



Accursed be the tongue that tells me so.
For it has cowed my better part of man
And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense,
That keep the word of promise to our ear
And break it to our hope. I'll not fight with thee.



Macbeth goes down fighting. He may be a tyrant, but he has been manipulated by his own wife as well as the three witches. Shakespeare intended to represent him as a great warrior willing to take on the whole world, including the supernatural world ruled by fate. It is only because Macbeth has been "unmanned" by these "juggling fiends" that a lesser man like Macduff is able to beat him in hand-to-hand battle. 


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