Response to Shakespeare's Macbeth

Response to Shakespeare's Macbeth

Look very carefully at Act 1, scene 3 (L.30 - 62) and comment on the

significance of the witches' predictions. How do the witches affect

what happens in the play, and how do you visualise them on stage?

Throughout Shakespeare's life, witches and witchcraft were the objects

of fevered fascination. Between 1560 and 1603 hundreds of people

(nearly all women) were convicted as witches and executed. Witches

were credited with diabolical powers. They could predict the future,

fly, sail in sieves, bring on night in daytime and kill animals. They

were thought to have cursed enemies with wasting diseases, induced

nightmares and sterility, and could take possession of any individual

they chose. This brings into the play the idea of fate and the role

with which it has in the play. One can wonder if Macbeth ever had a

chance of doing what was right after he met with the witches.

The three witches in "Macbeth" are introduced right at the beginning

of the play. The first line in the play introduces the witches and

sets the scene perfectly, " Thunder and lightning. Enter three

witches" Immediately the reader get the vision of a remote "desolate

place", as described in the book. In Act 1 Scene 3, the witches meet

Macbeth for the first and time they recount to Macbeth three

prophesies. That Macbeth is Thane of Glamis followed by Thane of

Cawdor and finally he will become King of Scotland. These prophecies

introduce Macbeth to ideas of greatness and contribute significantly

to the string of brutal murders that follow. He is spellbound by what

they tell him and he trusts their second sight completely. It is

howe...

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... happen in the play. I think that the

three sisters' predictions are significant to the play because they

spur Macbeth's "vaulting ambition". Some of their prophecies seem

self-fulfilling. For example, it is doubtful that Macbeth would have

murdered his king without the push given by the witches' predictions.

In other cases, though, their prophecies are just accurate readings of

the future-it is hard to see Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane as being

self-fulfilling. The play offers no easy answers. Instead, Shakespeare

keeps the witches well outside the limits of human reality. The

witches play the central part of the story. Also witchcraft and the

supernatural were considered to be potent, powerful forces at the time

in which the play is set. I think that the witches are an important

element in the tragedy that unfolds.