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Explain the term ‘weird sisters’ and comment on the part played by the sisters in Macbeth.

The term weird sisters represent to supernatural element. They are some time describe as goddesses.

The others hold that, great as is their influence on the action it is so because they are merely symbolic representations of the unconscious or half conscious guilt in Macbeth himself.

Bradley has criticised well both the views. Summing up his views we reach to the following conclusion: (1) The witches, that is to say, are not goddesses or fates, or, if in any way whatever, supernatural beings. They are old women, poor and ragged, skinny and hideous full of vulgar spite, occupied in killing their neighbour’s swine or revenging themselves on sailor’s wives who have refused them chestnuts. There is not a syllable in Macbeth to imply that they are anything but women. But again in accordance with the popular ideas, they have received from evil spirits certain supernatural powers. They can traise-hails, tempest and hurtful weather; as lightning, thunder, etc. They can pass from place to place in the aire invisible’. They can ‘keep devils and spirits in the likeness of toads and cats’, Paddock or Gravmalkin. They can transferre corne in the blade from one place to another. They can ‘manifest upto other things hidden and lost, and foreshew things to come and see them as though they were present. Shakespeare read to be sure, in Holinshed, his main source for the story of Macbeth, that, according to the common opinion, the ‘women’ who met Macbeth ‘were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say) ‘goddesses of destine, or els some Nimphes or Faieries’. But what does that matter? What he read in his authority was absolutely nothing to his audience, and remains nothing to us, unless he used what he read. He used nothing but the phrase ‘weird sisters’, which certainly no more suggested to a London audience the Pareae of one mythology or the Norns of another that it does today. His witches owe all their power to the spirit, they are ‘instruments of darkness’, the spirits are their ‘masters’.

Next, while the influence of the Witches, prophecies on Macbeth is very great, it is quite clearly shown to be an influence and nothing more. The prophecies of the Witches are presented simply as dangerous circumstance with which Macbeth has to deal. They are dramatically on the same level as the story of the Ghost in Hamlet, or the falsehood told by lago to Othello. Macbeth is more free from Witches than Hamlet of ghost. The influence of the first prophecies upon him came as much from himself as from them, is made abundantly clear by the obviously intentional contrast between him and Banquo. Banquo is scarcely even startled by them and he remains indifferent to them throughout. But when Macbeth heard them he was not an innocent man. In either case not only was he free to accept or resist the temptation, but the temptation was already within him. Speaking strictly we must affirm that he was tampted only by himself. He speaks indeed of their supernatural soliciting’. but in fact they did not solicit.

We observe a striking change, when Macbeth sees the Witches after the murders of Duncan and Banquo. They no longer need to go and meet him; he seeks them out. He as committed himself to his course of evil. Now accordingly they do ‘solicit’. They bid him be bloody, bold, and secure, Macbeth curses the Witches for deceiving him, but he never attempts to shifts to them the burden of his guilt.

The Witches did foreknow Macbeth’s future, and what is foreknown is fixed; and how can a man be responsible when his future is fixed ? With this question, as a speculative one, we have no concern here; but, in so far as it relates to the play, I answer, first, that not one of the things foreknowns is an action. This is just as true of the later prephecies as of the first. That Macbeth will be named by none of women born, and will never be vanquistred, Birnam wood shall come against him, involves (so far as we are informed) no action of his. It may be doubted, whether Shakespeare would have introduced prophecies of Macbeth’s deeds, even if it had been convenient to do so; he would probably have felt that to do so would interfere with the interest of the inward struggle and suffering.