The Role of Witches in Macbeth by William Shakespeare

The Role of Witches in Macbeth by William Shakespeare

The witches present modern directors with great difficulties. Consider

the role of the witches and suggest how they can be made as successful

for a modern audience as they would have been for a contemporary

audience.

In Shakespeare’s day, the thought of the witches scared people as they

thought that they had witches living among them, casting spells on

them and trying to do them harm. This fear was fuelled by the King at

the time, James I, who believed strongly in the Divine right of Kings.

This meant that he thought he derived his authority from God and so

could not be held responsible for his actions by any authorities on

earth. He felt that if he was God’s representative on earth, then

Satan must also have one. He wrote a book on demonology, which talked

about witches powers and origins.

Due to this, it would have been very easy to make the witches seem

frightening to an audience of that time. Nowadays however, people do

not believe in witches and are not as superstitious. This makes it

much more difficult for a director to make them as frightening as

Shakespeare intended them to be.

Shakespeare managed to make the witches seem evil by using a variety

of techniques. One way was by giving the witches scary looking

costumes. This could be achieved by wearing dark, worn out clothes and

having dirty matted hair. Make-up could be worn to make them ugly and

give them warts and blemishes on the face to make them seem unclean

and unhealthy.

Banquo says that they:

“Look not like th’inhabitants o’th’earth.”

This would have made the audience think of them as demon l...

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...r method which could be used is to make their environment cold

and desolate. Rooms they are in could have dead plants, no windows and

dark damp walls. This would give the impression that they bring death

and darkness with them wherever they go, making them seem more evil

and sinister to the audience.

They could also act cruelly to each other. This would make them seem

more evil as they are even cruel to people who they are ‘friends’ with

making them seem like they do not care for anyone other than

themselves and are incapable of love or proper interaction with

others.

In conclusion, a modern director would have a harder job making the

audience scared of the witches. They would have to use more

psychological methods to scare them and adapt the witches’ characters

so that they are more relevant to modern society.