Witches in Macbeth by William Shakespeare

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Witches in Macbeth by William Shakespeare

People that lived during the Elizabethan period were very superstitious. They feared the power of witches the most. The hate stemmed mostly from the ". . . supposed satanic beliefs of the witches and their heretical partnership with the Devil" (Papp and Kirkland 43). Others thought of witches only when something of value had been damaged. They automatically assumed that a witch or one of her familiars must have done it, and "the one thing everyone [knew] about witches [was] that they were women" (Briggs 259). Because of the rigid social rules for women during the Elizabethan period, it was very difficult for a woman during that time to always do as she was supposed to do, and because of the strictness of these rules, many times she failed. Unfortunately, the consequences of not being the perfect example of femininity meant the possibility of being labeled a witch. Because Lady Macbeth and the Weird Sisters are far from being perfect examples of proper Elizabethan women and because they do not attempt to conform to their society's rules and expectations, they are often classified as being witches.

Older women were the easiest targets for witch-hunters because of their haggard appearance. Reginald Scott describes witches as being "'. . . leane and deformed, shewing melancholie in their faces, to the horror of all that see them'" (Jorgensen 118). Macbeth's Weird Sisters carry these characteristics of witches. Banquo describes them as being " . . . So withered and so wild in their attire, / That [they] look not like th' inhabitants o' th' earth" (1.3.40-41).

Many stereotypes were established for what a witch actually looked like. The Weird Sisters carry most of those stereo...

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... York, 1996.

Dyer, Rev. T. F. Thiselton and M. A. Oxon. Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. New

York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966.

Jorgensen, Paul A. Our Naked Frailties: Sensational Art and Meaning in

Macbeth. California: University of California Press, 1971.

La-Belle, Jenijoy. "'A Strange Infirmity.' Lady Macbeth's Amenorrhea."

Shakespeare Quarterly. 31.1 (1980).

Papp, Joseph and Elizabeth Kirkland. Shakespeare Alive!. New York: Banton

Books, 1988.

Shakespeare, William. "Macbeth." The Complete Works of Shakespeare. 4th

ed. David Bevington. Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare's Tragedy of Macbeth. Ed. Harold T.

Eaton. Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 1933.

Wills, Garry. Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare's Macbeth. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1995.

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