![]() This book–and an earlier one called Malleus Maleficarum ( The Witches' Hammer, 1486), describing the demonic rites of witches–helped inflame people against practitioners of sorcery. Thereafter, he studied the occult and wrote a book called Daemonologie (Demonology), published in 1597. Their trial and testimony convinced him that they were agents of evil. In 1591, when he was King of Scotland during the reign of Elizabeth I, a group of witches and sorcerers attempted to murder him. In Shakespeare's time, many people believed in the power of witches. They embody an unreasoning, instinctive evil. Instead, Shakespeare keeps the witches well outside the limits of human comprehension. In other cases, though, their prophecies are just remarkably accurate readings of the future-it is hard to see Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane as being self-fulfilling in any way. For example, it is doubtful that Macbeth would have murdered his king without the push given by the witches’ predictions. ![]() Some of their prophecies seem self-fulfilling. The witches bear a striking and obviously intentional resemblance to the Fates, female characters in both Norse and Greek mythology who weave the fabric of human lives and then cut the threads to end them. The audience is left to ask whether the witches are independent agents toying with human lives, or agents of fate, whose prophecies are only reports of the inevitable. ![]() Despite the absurdity of their “eye of newt and toe of frog” recipes, however, they are clearly the most dangerous characters in the play, being both tremendously powerful and utterly wicked (4.1.14). The witches’ words seem almost comical, like malevolent nursery rhymes. Shakespeare has them speak in rhyming couplets throughout (their most famous line is probably “Double, double, toil and trouble, / Fire burn and cauldron bubble” in 4.1.10–11), which separates them from the other characters, who mostly speak in blank verse. The witches’ beards, bizarre potions, and rhymed speech make them seem slightly ridiculous, like caricatures of the supernatural.
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