The Role of Witches in William Shakespeare's Macbeth

The Role of Witches in William Shakespeare's Macbeth

In Macbeth the witches make a huge contribution to the play and the

way it comes across to an audience. The witches portray many themes in

Macbeth, such as the theme of fate, and the way that they are supposed

to have the power of changing someone's fate, and the way they can

control people using their power. The witches also depict a theme of

pure evil, and the way they treat others in the play shows this.

Religion also is a big theme in Macbeth, references to the trinity,

whether it is the unholy, or the holy trinity. Also blasphemous and

sacrilegious beliefs appear often throughout the play. As well as

these themes, one of the biggest is the theme of motherhood, and

particular the distortion of motherhood. References to babies being

killed appear which only hints at the evil that the witches bring to

the play. The witches often speak about being able to change someone's

fate, and in the time which Shakespeare wrote Macbeth people had

strong beliefs about this as does Macbeth who speaks about fate often.

This also hints at the connections between the witches and Macbeth.

"Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel"

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Here the captain is talking about Macbeth's victory over the

Norwegians. He uses the very significant phrase 'Disdaining Fortune'

This relates to Macbeth being able to defeat his fate, which is very

important because the witches are said to be able to change about

witches and the powers they were supposed to possess. James I, the

king in Shakespeare's time had a strong belief in witches and devoted

a lot o...

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...usly a dangerous thing to do, because if he

treats them like friends it means he trusts them. The fact that

Macbeth trusts the witches' shows that his ambition and power hungry

nature have taken over the way he thinks, and it has taken away the

little caution he had in the first place. The witches appear to be

taking advantage of Macbeth's ambitious nature and they are using it

against him, to get him to trust them more and more. Even thought they

never lie to Macbeth they only ever tell him half-truths, which ends

up misleading him as he does not think to work out what the witches

are telling him. Also Macbeth, because he becomes completely absorbed

by his new found power he becomes very cocky, and decides to ignore

the fact that there maybe a threat to his life because he doesn't

think about what could happen to him.