WITCHES IN ‘MACBETH’

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 187, 4 May 1940, Page 4

WITCHES IN ‘MACBETH’

Not Intended As Light Relief CREATURES OF IGNORANT AGE

(By

H.P.)

Now that the Thespians’ performance of “Macbeth” is but <T receding memory, it may be permissible to refer to some aspects of this mighty tragedy, which Is so enriched with, incidents of dire misfortune and shameful villainy that it will never die. “History,” it has been said, “Is the record of successful crimes.” Macbeth was not the first aggressor by many centuries, but he had. the same propensity to reach out. and help himself to power that we see in the present day. Shakespeare makes it pretty clear that Macbeth himself might not have gone the full distance in the foul ending of King Duncan’s life, had it not been for the promptings of two emissaries of the Evil One—the first the harridans of the blasted heath, boasting the gift of second sight, and. secondly, their sister in crime, Lady Macbeth, whose corrosive tongue bends the will of the man to the fell purpose When I saw “Maobeth” in Wellington recently there were titterings around me when the red fire revealed the witches squatting by their bubbling cauldron. In other productions of “Macbeth” I have heard audiences laugh outright, as the crones hobbled round the steaming devil’s brew, screaming their dolorous monody:

Round about the cauldron go; In the poisoned entrails throw. Toad, that under the cold stone, Days and nights hast thirty-one. Sweltered venom sleeping got Boil thou in the charmed pot.

Double, dquble toil and trouble. Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

I may be wrong, but I fancy some people imagine, that Shakespeare threw the witches into “Macbeth” as light relief. They are nothing of the kind They tire very real, serious people; semi-demented persons who, with their devil-possessed minds, played a very vital part in the lives of the Ignorant masses of the middle ages, -htiej were not the least bit funny. Otten gifted with a certain hypnotic power, they influenced people this way or that; and were consulted by rich amt poor, high and low, in their anxiety to learn something about the future, the key to which it was actually believed those forlorn creatures possessed. Of course, it was all bunkum. But it was not accepted as such by the people of the “Macbeth” era, when probably not 5 per cent, of the population had more than a smattering of education, and few could read or write. Superstition ran riot in a world of Ignorance, and certain old women took advantage of it to gain a kind of unwholesome fame or notoriety, which gave them an advantage over others. So much of a threat were witches to the public peace of mind, that in 1604 a law was enacted in England providing dire penalties against those practising witchcraft. Miiebeth himself was an educated man for his time. Was lie not Thane of Glamis? He was able to write a letter to his wife, apprising her of his coming and of the prophecy of the witches he had- encountered on the heath; and, then, he had a strong philosophic strain, as witnessed in his apostrophe—

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and, tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To tin- lust syllable of recorded time.

Yet. this Thane of Glamis. this educated Scot, though lie blustered ami bragged to the weird sisters, took what they said very' seriously; seriously enough to record their prophecies in a letter to his wife; seriously enough for those prophecies to implant the maggot in his brain which led to his undoing. No, these witches are not “light relief.” They were deliberately inserted by the playwright as creatures of his time, figures of appalling horror, the essence of evil in human guise. None of this means that Shakespeare forgot liis light, relief. He was too much the actor to forget anything so important. There is tlie drunken porter, with his quaint philosophy, Io relieve the tension. We have, too, the fool in “King Lear.” the first gravedigger in “Hamlet,” the bright bubbling Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet,” and tlie devilish humour of lago in “Othello.” So well did lie mix the constituents in his plays that he left the world a treasure of masterpieces, which of all dramatic literature is alone comparable to the Greek tragedies of the Golden Age.