How does Shakespeare use Act 1 Scene 2 of Macbeth to foreshadow Macbeth's actions later in the play?

Firstly, make sure you understand what is meant by the term ‘foreshadowing’. This occurs when the author gives the audience clues or hints about something that happens later in the text. In this case, we’re looking for quotations that suggest, at this very early stage in the play, that Macbeth will go on to rebel against Duncan and overthrow him.Macbeth’s capacity for violence is illustrated very clearly in this scene. The Captain explains that Macbeth ‘unseam'd [the rebel Macdonwald] from the nave to th'chops’, with the verb ‘unseam’d’ suggesting tailoring or sewing, and thus Macbeth’s efficiency and precision in war. This suggests a sense of discipline, but also hints at the obsessive single-mindedness that drives Macbeth's fatal ambition. Meanwhile, the idea that Macbeth ‘meant to bathe in reeking wounds’ implies that he takes excessive delight in inflicting violence on the rebels. This signifies the potential for Macbeth’s violence to go beyond acceptable limits, as it does when he usurps Duncan later in the play. Macbeth’s warlike nature is such that he is given the epithet ‘Bellona's bridegroom’, suggesting marriage to the Roman goddess of war Bellona. As well as Macbeth’s potentially violent nature, the fact that he is given Macdonwald’s former title of Thane of Cawdor makes him almost fated to rebel in a similar way to his predecessor. When Duncan tells Rosse to ‘greet Macbeth’ with Macdonwald’s ‘former title’, the previous epithet used to describe Macdonwald is ‘that most disloyal traitor’, a “title” which later becomes equally applicable to Macbeth himself. After the witches’ appearance in the previous scene, the audience is already alert to the role of fate in Macbeth’s actions, and the idea that he is not fully in control of his own destiny.