The Purpose Of The Witches In Macbeth

The Witches Purpose

In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, there are three witches that tell Macbeth his prophecy that he will become king of Scotland. Macbeth becomes obsessed with the thought of power, and goes on an evil path to become king. The witches however do not do anything after that other than give Macbeth a second prophecy. All they do is play games and watch the events of Macbeth unfold, and it is shown that their purpose is not needed. The entire reason that they were in the play in the first place was because the audience of the time loved witchcraft. Witches were thought to be agents of satan, and it was always great to watch the hero triumph over them in the end of a story. Shakespeare had put the witches in just for that one purpose, to appeal to the audience, they were not a story driven role. With the witches in the play they only change the way Macbeth thinks, but the overall outcome of the story would have all unfolded the same way.

Although

In the year 1604, just two years before the play Macbeth was written, the law became you could be hung, burned, or tortured for being suspected as a witch. A critic from recorce.edu said “Whether Shakespeare himself believed in witches does not matter. He used them for his play, and many of his audience would have believed in them as thoroughly evil servants of the devil (Marotous).” Like many other times in shows or movies a piece is included because it part of the fad, except in this time the fad was just a little more deadly. According to Southern Utah University the way the viewed witches the complete opposite way we do. In Shakespeare’s time if you believed that witches were not real, then you would be thought of as crazy or that you even had potential of getting cursed yourself. Even the people who were considered to not believe in God at the time, still had some thoughts that witches could have been