The Partial Responsibility of the Witches in William Shakespeares Macb

It is the purpose of this assignment to explore whether the witches influenced Macbeth sufficiently to cause him to commit murder, treason and regicide, or whether Macbeth was capable of committing these crimes on his own and the witches only made this happen a little earlier and a little more certainly. We will also explore the Elizabethan audience, their superstitions, and how they would react to the character of the witches as seen in Macbeth. Historically, the witches have been seen as evil beings that gain evil powers from the devil to use during their lifetime, in return for their souls when they die. In the United Kingdom, man's belief in witches and the supernatural was very strong during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Laws were passed by Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and James I prohibiting witchcraft and making the practise punishable by death. Witches were used as scapegoats in Elizabethan society. During the years 1580-90 there was a famine and rebellion throughout the land, 160 witch trials took place in south-east England alone. In the years 1620-30, there was relatively little famine only 25 trials took place, the Civil War then broke out in 1642, the number of trials rocketed to 75. If the crops failed or if an animal was sick, people would automatically suspect that a witch was involved because the people at this time had very little medical or scientific knowledge to explain these occurrences. The majority of witches executed were old women who lived alone, if they kept any sort of animal for company, e.g. a cat, then people could claim that the animal was a "familiar", an evil spirit given to .. ...esponsible and we see these traits at work after Act 4, Scene 1, when his "boundless ambition" and the influences of the witches' apparitions make him engage in a final battle between the two armies of good and evil at the end of the play. The Elizabethan audience would have hated the witches, partly because they would attribute any misfortunes in their own lives to the actions of similar beings. Shakespeare chose to use the witches in this way for two reasons. Firstly, the audience's fear and superstition about witches would mean that there was little need to develop their characters further than evil beings, because the people would already know a lot about them, and secondly because of how fervently James I not only believed in witches, but believed that they were the cause of all the suffering in his kingdom.