Macbeth- The Witches Essay

It could be said that the witches in ‘Macbeth’, are possibly some of the best known characters in Shakespeare’s work. With famous words like ‘Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble’, it is true to say that they have probably heavily influenced the depiction of witches in later works to a great extent. The play derives from a time when witchcraft was something of great public concern. Extreme persecution of anyone found to be practising something that could be interpreted as ‘black arts’ was common in Stuart society. (Old women who kept cats were in extreme danger of meeting the requirements for stereotypical ‘witch’) The play, which tells the fate, of the Scottish royal family, had real-life connections with the Scottish royal family at the time. The character Banquo was supposedly a relative of King James who was the King of Scotland. (Although it has been discovered that he never existed, he was made up at the birth of the Stuart dynasty) The heavy influences of the witches on the play, also matched King James’s interest in Demonology. So the question has been asked was ‘Macbeth’ written for King James? Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries ‘witches’, were terrifying but also fascinating to the general public. During this time hundreds of witches were persecuted, and were hung or burnt at stake. Witches were so greatly feared, because of the apparent ‘powers’ which they possessed, which allegedly included; the ability to fly, the ability to raise storms and control the weather, possession of people, and an ability to kill livestock. However curiously inspite of these powers of ‘deadly destruction’, people took a great interest in the lives and ways of witches. (Rather like Macbeth when he meets them for the first time) Thousands of pamphlets were printed and sold with incredible sales; on a par with those achieved by a popular magazine or broadsheet today. These pamphlets contained gory accounts of witch trials, or sad stories from the victims of ‘witchcraft’. It is quite possible that these pamphlets were a catalyst for the probl em with witches, by making everyone paranoid of ‘supernatural threats’. The cruel and unjust persecution of the witches was based on stereotypes. You may well have found yourself persecuted as a witch for example if you were; physically deformed or scarred in any way, old (especially if you were a woman, as many of the women persecuted as witches were old women who kept cats which were apparently familiars), mentally ill, or even if you just didn’t fit in. In 1604, when Parliament passed an act, making the practice of witchcraft punishable by death, the situation got even worse. In ‘Macbeth’ the witches appear four times; Act 1 Scene 1, Act1 Scene 3, Act 3 Scene 5, and Act 4 Scene 1. Although the originality of the appearance in Act 3 is controversial. It is thought that this scene and the character Hecate (who also briefly appears in Act 4) were not written by Shakespeare and that they were written into the script at a later date. In Act 1 Scene 1, the witches open the play in what is described in the text as a desolate place. The scene is brief, in the conversation that the three witches have, they decide to meet Macbeth on ‘the heath.’ In Act 1 Scene 3, the three witches have gathered on the heath, and are awaiting Macbeth who is returning from battle. When Macbeth and his companion Banquo come by they move from their place of hiding and greet Macbeth: FIRST WITCH: All hail Macbeth, hail to thee, thane of Glamis. SECOND WITCH: All hail to Macbeth, hail to thee, thane of Cawdor. THIRD WITCH: All hail Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter. (Act 1, Scene 3, lines 46-48) After the witches have given this prophecy, Banquo criticises the witches and makes jokes at them calling them â€Å"not like the inhabitants of this earth.† Macbeth however is intrigued but before he can find out anymore the witches vanish. Act 3 Scene 5, is the controversial Hecate scene. In the scene Hecate does most of the talking, and she warns that they should not have done what they did to Macbeth. In Act 4 Scene 1, the scene begins with the witches entering and casting a spell. Then Macbeth (who is now King) enters and confronts the witches, demanding to know more about his future. In response the witches show Macbeth three apparitions which reveal his fate. The three apparitions tell Macbeth this: â€Å"Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth, beware Macduff.† (First apparition) â€Å"None of woman born shall harm Macbeth† (second apparition) â€Å"Macbeth shall never be vanquished until great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane shall come against him† (third apparition). Macbeth is pleased by what he hears. The witches then show Macbeth a ‘show of eight kings’, after Macbeth sees this he is angered, and curses the witches, but soon after they vanish. Right from the very first scene the witches make a dramatic impression on the play. To audiences the first scene has a wonderful way of captivating them, generating attention and interest in the play from the first word. The odd setting and droning language of the witches makes the dialogue interesting and unusual. On stage or in the cinema, use of smoke, lightning and thunder effects give an exciting feel to the opening moments. The short length of the scene means that the audience is listening all the time. (Research has shown that most audiences will stop listening after about a minute unless there is something to draw their attention back to the story) Another point about the first scene is that after all the smoke and thunder, the play moves to another much more friendly place, with a normal conversation, between normal people. The comparison between the witches’ supernatural appearance, and the normality of human life, is an excellent way of showing the contrast between ordinary and extraordinary, and good and evil. Which is a contrast that appears throughout the play. One place where these contrasts appear between ordinary and extraordinary is in the witches. Aside from adding their weird supernatural side to the plot they also contribute in a manner that brings the whole story together. If you took the witches away from the play then this is what the storyline looks like: Macbeth an ambitious thane, is returning from a hard fought battle, when he is told that he is to receive the title of thane of Cawdor. Seeing the potential of this new position, Macbeth sets his sights on higher things. Macbeth successfully assassinates the king with the help of his wife, and scares away the heirs to the throne. On the throne Macbeth is a harsh King and, as questions arise about the Duncan’s murder, he becomes a tyrant and many former friends are killed. Eventually his crimes are too much and Macbeth is overthrown and killed by the true heir to the throne. Much as this is a fairly good storyline, when you add in the witches it becomes a great story. (Indeed Macbeth is recognised as a theatrical masterpiece) The witches add many new dimensions and contrasts and raise many questions. Like is fate fixed? What is the balance between good and evil? What the witches do is enter the play and tell Macbeth his prophecy, by doing this they set Macbeth off exploiting an ambitious flaw in his personality. One question that surrounds the play is whether the witches possess Macbeth and make him commit the crimes, or whether they merely use an ability to predict the future, to set Macbeth off. After this Macbeth’s ambition drives him on to commit many murders and a regicide. Well there is certainly evidence within the play that Macbeth is possessed. When he meets the witches for the first time he is obsessed with them and maybe this is the beginning of his possession. Macbeth also shows stereotypical signs of possession in his behaviour and speech: in Act 1 Scene 3 when Macbeth first comes across the witches Banquo says â€Å"look how our partner’s rapt† because Macbeth appears to be entranced; which was a typical sign of possession. Also he shows an inability to pray, in Act 2 Scene 2 he says â€Å"Amen, stuck in my throat† being unable to pray was linked to the fact that according to 17th century folk-lore the possessed was being controlled by a minion of Satan. However there is also a possibility that Macbeth is in fact only ‘inspired’ by the witches when he hears his fate. Then the witches coax him on with illusions, and tricks. Like the appearance of the dagger that leads Macbeth to King Duncan’s room in Act 2 Scene 1, Banquo’s ghost in Act 3 Scene 4, and perhaps the possession of Lady Macbeth. If this is the case then one has to ask would Macbeth have become King anyway if he just waited, and that his fate was fixed that he did become a legitimate King. However his knowledge of his fate led him off course. Whichever way (if either of them) it is definite that the witches were a changing part of Macbeth’s psychology. As has been mentioned, when Macbeth’s fate is prophesised by the witches in Act 3 Scene 1, he is entranced. Perhaps this due to a possession, perhaps this is due to some form of euphoria that has come over him after he finds out that he will become King. Either way he is very serious about the witches’ prophecies and he holds a high view of the witches as they can provide him with information about his future, which to Macbeth sounds very promising. This stands in direct contrast to Banquo’s opinion of the witches; he criticises the witches and ignores their predictions. Later on the scheme of events has played out and Macbeth is on the throne, again by possession or by ambition. By now Macbeth is starting to realise the potential mess he has got himself into, and so he goes to find the witches. After receiving new information, Macbeth is fooled by the witches, into thinking he has some sort of immortality. However he does not ignore their advice and he still respects what they say, so he is not feeling so powerful that he feels he can ignore the apparitions and the witches. For example in response to the apparition’s warning, â€Å"beware Macduff,† Macbeth has Macduff’s family murdered. However the sense of immortality soon fades. When he finds that Malcolm and his allies are marching to Dunsinane Castle, he realises the tricks that the witches have played on him. He sees that the apparitions were meant to fool him into thinking he was invulnerable to death, and he refers to the witches as â€Å"juggling fiends†. Macbeth realises the trap that he is caught in, and sees that he was part of the witches’ game. At this point whatever is driving Macbeth; possession or hatred dies and turns to hate for life. Although Macbeth may have been possessed he did not ask to be, however his wife Lady Macbeth did. Similarly to Macbeth though she could either be controlled by ambition, thinking that she was possessed or actually under possession. Her need for power begins when she reads Macbeth’s letter In Act 1 Scene 5, she (like Macbeth when he first hears the news of his destiny) is fascinated. In the same scene as she receives the letter she calls upon the power of the spirits to ‘un-sex’ her and â€Å"fill me from the crown to the toe topfull of direst cruelty.† (Lines 37-52) She demands that her emotional weakness is removed and that she is filled with the evil intent to murder the king. It shows from this time until Duncan’s murder that she has indeed been filled with this evil. It is she who really pushes Macbeth to murder Duncan, possibly with a little help from the witches. However almost immediately after the King is murdered, this evil leaves her. In Act 2 Scene 2, an owl shrieks, and Lady Macbeth is terrified. Just earlier that evening she had been driving and pushing Macbeth to murder the King, who had just given Macbeth a title for being faithful to the crown! Indeed she becomes so unhinged that she goes completely mad. Some productions of Macbeth have Lady Macbeth playing one of the witches. Some people have also suggested that maybe Lady Macbeth is one of the witches, and that there has been a disagreement among the witches, and the tragic events of Macbeth are in fact the witches punishing Lady Macbeth. The witches stand out in ‘Macbeth’ in many ways, not only in character, and appearance, but also in the way that they speak. Most of the play is written in iambic pentameter, or blank verse. The witches however speak in trochaic verse, which not only has a different rhythm to iambic pentameter, but rhymes as well. The fact that the witches are the only characters to rhyme their speech makes them stand out; the droning chant in the first scene is made really eerie by use of rhyming language, with long syllables. The frequent use of antithesis, which is the use of opposites in the same sentence, is also common within the language of the witches. For example in Act 1 Scene 1 â€Å"when the battle is lost and won† This use of contradictive language sounds unusual, and therefore alienates the witches further. Sometimes the witches also speak ‘as one’; they often chant lines as a group, particularly â€Å"Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble†. This can appear eerie to watchers, as it conveys strength in the form of unit efficiency. Sometimes the witches seem to have a telepathic ability, for example when Macbeth demands to know more about his destiny, in Act 5 Scene 1 the script looks like this: FIRST WITCH: Speak! SECOND WITCH: Demand! THIRD WITCH: We’ll answer. Of course a telepathic ability is certainly not normal, and therefore this also adds to the eerie feel that surrounds the witches. ‘Macbeth’ is a not only an excellent play, but also manages to bring into question various philosophical and moral issues. The supernatural edge to Macbeth makes you wonder about witches and the power of evil. Are there forces of evil, which can influence us? Are good and evil internal or external? The main issue surrounding Macbeth is that of fate. Is it fixed, is our path in life set or can we change or at least influence it? What is the relationship between fate and time? If one’s fate is discovered, will it influence us to either strive for this future, or if we don’t like what fate holds in store, will we try to change it? However you perceive ‘Macbeth’, I believe it is summed up like this. Whatever it was that drove Macbeth, ambition, possession or something else entirely, it poisoned him. People are around whose ambition will be a threat to society, and if you feel it exists, then witchcraft is also a threat to society. Yet de spite of these threats, the forces of good are on the side of the innocent. Order will be restored to its rightful owners.