resortlooki.blogg.se

This "weïrd sisterhood" stands in opposition to the male-dominated, Christian world of the kings and thanes and soldiers of Scotland. Our witches form a separate community that exists on the outskirts of society in 11th-century Scotland, the time when the historical Macbeth lived. We want to create a whole community of witches, and restore to them some of the power implicit in the traditions on which they draw. These figures have had a powerful attraction for many artists we've been drawn, for example, to a number of images of the Norns by Arthur Rackham, including this one: They stand in a line of "goddesses of destiny" such as the Norns of Norse mythology and the Greek Fates. This set of ideas links the witches of the play back to the older, pre-Christian mythological traditions of early Europe. Shakespeare's historical source for the events of the play, Holinshed's Chronicles, says that the witches who appeared to Macbeth and Banquo looked like "creatures of elder world," and that many people thought they were "the goddesses of destiny." This is in keeping with the way the witches refer to themselves in their dialogue: they call themselves "the weïrd sisters," where "weïrd" comes from the Old English term wyrd, meaning "fate" or "destiny." And the primary power that the witches have in the play is indeed the ability to prophesy about what will happen in the future. We want to delve a little deeper with our witches. They draw heavily on the conventional theatrical stereotypes of Shakespeare's time, giving us witches that are sometimes scary, sometimes silly.

They were taken from another play, by Thomas Middleton, and added to Macbeth by Shakespeare's acting company after he had died. While the witches are one of the most striking and memorable aspects of Macbeth, many of the witch scenes in the play were not written by Shakespeare at all. One of the "living environments" we want to create for this production (see the Production Design page for more details) will be the witches' grove.