The Witches

The Witches

1. Similarity to Lady Macbeth

   • Role of Lady Macbeth
     • Influences Macbeth
       • Plays on his masculinity and his ambition
     • Witches push Macbeth in certain directions
       • Combination with LM questions MAcbeth's free will
   • Both use language related to the supernatural
     • "Come, you spirits"
       • Sounds like an incantatation
     • "Come thick night"
   • Unnatural Femininity
     • "I'll do, and I'll do, and I'll do"
       • Repetition shows power and emphasis of masculinity
     • "Come to my women's breast"
       • Wants to remove her femininity
       • Use of "women's" shows her distance from this idea

2. Influence in the play

   • The Witches start the play
     • Whenever they speak something is revealed
       • They are structurally key to the plot of the play
       • "Beware Macduff, Beware the thane of Fife
         • They create the antagonist in the play
           • In the end, M's bold declarative shows his misplaced confidence
   • Their speech is repeated by other characters
     • "so fair and foul a day I have not seen"
   • Hold power over Macbeth
     • "Speak, I charge you
       • A number of imperatives in short succession
         • Desperation and tainted delusional view

3. Unnatural appearance

   • Animal imagery
     • "eye of newt and toe of dog"
       • Links to Elizabethan belief that witches could turn into animals
       • Creates a sense that they are not human but supernatural
         • This was scary to the Elizabethan people
   • They use paradoxical language
     • "where the battle is lost and won"
   • They speak in rhyming couplets
     • This is done by no other person
   • Pathetic fallacy
     • They meet in the night and in bad weather
       • "when shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain."