THE THREE WITCHES
The witches are three “black and midnight
hags” who use charms, spells and prophecies to make disruption against Macbeth.
The Witches prophecies prompt Macbeth to demand the deaths of Banquo and his
son, to murder Duncan himself and to blindly believe in his own immortality.
The true identity of the witches is left unclear— we know little about their
place in the cosmos aside from the fact that they are servants of Hecate. They
resemble the mythical fates in some ways, who carefully weave the threads of
human destiny. They clearly take a stubborn enjoyment in using their knowledge
of the future to play with and destroy human beings. Read an in-depth analysis of The Three Witches.