witches

• as the witches are aware that Macbeths ambition and hubris is his hamartia, they are duplicitous in using that to lure him into the idea of committing regicide
• "All hail Macbeth, that shall be king hereafter !"
• Shakespeare utilises the theme of the supernatural, personified through the witches, to illuminate the fatal consequences of being involved with the forces of evil
• Macbeths relationship with the witches is microcosmic of why we should not be involved with the supernatural because of its fatal consequences which is down fall
• "though his bark cannot be lost, yet it shall be tempest-tossed"
• Macbeth is a puppet to the witches
• "so foul and fair a day I have not seen"
• "harpies"-they are the ministers of the thunder, Zeus
• "your face my thane is like a book"
• "imperfect speakers"
• ostensible


  seemingly true but not necessarily
• "look not like the inhabitants of the earth and yet are on it"
• less syllable =less power
• the trochaic tetrameter also shows the witches social exclusion- maybe to make us feel bad for them and sheds light on why they trick men perhaps because they do not have husbands themselves - or simply because its a patriarchal society - even doubly marginalised because they are not only poor("rags") but also ugly ("beards")
• the childish portrayal of the witches is further reinforced as a recent royal Shakespeare company production cast three primary school aged girls to play the witches() yes you can talk about modern day interpretations as part of your context ho)
• Alternative interpretations

  Shakespeare does not believe in witches at all and although they do cast a few "charms" they never actually control the weather and instead the "thunder..." is simply a way of seeing further into the future of perhaps what is going happen to Macbeth- which subtly mocks/undermines the king's rather foolish belief in witchcraft as he believed that witches tampered with the weather while he was on ship
• The witches also never point out any instructions for Macbeth to kill Duncan or Macduff's family and its only his idea- showing how the witches aren't evil themselves but simply help to bring out the evil in others
• they speak in trochaic tetrameter- its the opposite of iambic- distinct them from rest of the characters- but it doesn't make them sound sinister but rather silly and childlike-that is how nursery rhymes sounded -mocking the belief in witchcraft and subtly highlighting that a belief in witchcraft is also just as childish
• a patriarchal society creates witches as they're not given power in the real world they have to get it from the devil