The Three Witches In Macbeth
"What is the significance of the three witches in Macbeth?"In this essay, I am seeking to answer the question: "What is the significance of the three witches in Macbeth?". In order to answer this, I will look at the following things: what I believe Shakespeare intended the witches to represent; what the witches aim to achieve throughout the play; and what they do ultimately achieve and its ramifications by the end of Macbeth.First of all, who and what are the witches? Clearly, they are not your friendly neighbourhood types (overplayed somewhat with the rather excessive pathetic fallacy) Some Shakespeare scholars have speculated that the three witches on Macbeth are intended to represent the three Fates of ancient mythology. However, as the latter are goddesses with powers far greater than the three hags of Shakespeare's tale, and the connection, I believe, is at best dim. Interestingly enough, three seems to be a recurrent figure in Macbeth. In Act I, Scene3, one of the "weird sisters" invokes magical powers:"Thrice to thrice, and thrice to mine,Again, at the start of Act IV, the first witch projects the time of Macbeth's second encounter with the weird sister
These promises come true, but not in the way that the victim originally believed. If we are to explore the significance of these witches we must do so by treating them as crucial poetic symbols in the play, vital manifestations of the moral atmosphere of Macbeth's world (like the ghost in Hamlet), and every bit as understandable to a modern day audience as to Shakespeare's. Some doubts about the nature of the witches in Macbeth have been aroused by the fact that they are called the 'Weird Sisters', a phrase that Shakespeare is believed to have borrowed from Holinshed's "Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland" (I577) - his source for the story of the play. They may be appealing to that idea (which we are given to believe originates in Macbeth some time previously), but they do not create it. And on that note, in answer to the question: "What is the significance of the three witches in Macbeth?" I will say, that while to Shakespeare's audience, the witches would have seemed very concrete indeed, in psychological or "modern" terms, the witches, I believe, must signify an externalisation of his inner ambition and greed, the chink, if you will, in the armour of his character. The cyclical nature of the recurrent visions of evil may be emphasised by a major contrast throughout the play between light and darkness. That is not to say, however, that the typical beliefs regarding witches at the time are not both useful as a starting point and as a frame of reference. They exist to tempt and to torment people, to challenge their faith in themselves and their society. The witches thus make their appeal to Macbeth and Banquo's desire to control their own future, to direct it towards some desirable ends. The trio of witches' interactions with Macbeth play a vital role in his thinking about his own life, both before and after the murder of Duncan. s by noting:"Thrice the brindled cat hath mew'd" (Act4 Scene1). Like Macbeth, he is strongly tempted, but he does not let his desires outweigh his moral caution: "But 'tis strange,And oftentimes to win us to our harmThe instruments of darkness tell us truths,Win us with honest trifles to betray'sIn deepest consequence" (Act1 Scene3)Macbeth cannot act on this awareness because his desires (kept alive by his active imagination and his wife's urging) constantly intrude upon his moral sensibility. Whether this is meant to echo the three hammer blows of fate or the three baths a day that was customary at the time, I don't know. They are part of the natural world, there to seduce anyone who, like Macbeth, lets his imagination flirt with evil possibilities. It is entirely self-fulfilling, and Macbeth is the only one who could ever fulfil himself.
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