The following analysis of Shakespeare's Weird Sisters is an excerpt from the book, Shakespeare and his Times, by Nathan Drake:
In the very first appearance, indeed, of the Weird Sisters to Macbeth and Banquo on the blasted heath, we discern beings of a more awful and spiritualized character than belonged to the vulgar herd of witches. “What are these,” exclaims the astonished Banquo, --
“What are these,
So wither’d, and so wild in their attire?” (1.3).
Even when unattended by any human witnesses, when supporting the dialogue merely among themselves, Shakespeare has placed in the mouths of these agents imagery and diction of a cast so peculiar and mysterious as to render them objects of alarm and fear, emotions incompatible with any tendency towards the ludicrous. But when, wheeling round the magic cauldron, in the gloomy recesses of their cave, they commence their incantations, chanting in tones wild and unearthly, and heard only during the intervals of a thunder-storm, their metrical charm, while flashes of subterranean fire obscurely light their haggard features, their language seems to breathe of hell, and we shrink back, as from beings at war with all that is good.
Yet is the impression capable of augmentation, and is felt to have attained its acme of sublimity and horror, when, in reply to the question of Macbeth,
“How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags?
What is’t you do?”
They reply,-- “A deed without a name.”
Much, however, of the dread, solemnity, and awe which is experienced in reading this play, from the intervention of the witches, is lost in its representation on the stage, owing to the injudicious custom of bringing them too forward on the scene; where, appearing little better than a group of old women, the effect intended by the poet is not only destroyed, but reversed. Their dignity and grandeur must arise, as evil beings gifted with superhuman powers, from the undefined nature both of their agency and of their eternal forms. Were they indistinctly seen, though audible, at a distance, and, as it were, through a hazy twilight, celebrating their orgies, and with shadowy and gigantic shape flitting between the pale blue flames of their caldron and the eager eye of the spectator, sufficient latitude would be given to the imagination, and the finest drama of our author would receive in the theatre that deep tone of supernatural horror with which it is felt to be so highly imbued in the solitude of the closet. (589)
Drake’s superb book, written in the 19th century, is available free for download.
