In this section you will find
· background information to witchcraft in Shakespeare's day
· photographs of witches from past productions at the RSC
· a creative writing exercise


When most people think of witches, they perhaps think of children's books (The Worst Witch, Harry Potter, Winnie The Witch etc) and of women dressed in black wearing tall, pointed hats. In Shakespeare's day there was widespread belief in witches and their powers, which had less to do with satanic rituals than with superstition that some women could hex (put a spell on) you.

Amongst other things, it was believed that witches could:

- fly
- make people ill
- conjure visions
- make themselves invisible
- conjure storms
- cause shipwrecks
- cause crops to fail

Witches were thought to be women who had sold their souls to the devil in exchange for doing evil deeds. It was believed that witches murdered children. Throughout Europe in the late 1500s/early 1600s, hundreds of thousands of women were accused of witchcraft, tortured or even
killed.


James VI of Scotland (who became, in 1603, King James I of England) was a Chrisitian who believed firmly that he was God's representative on earth. He argued that if God was represented on earth in human form, then so was the Devil. The Devil's representatives (the antitheses of a divine King), he said, were witches. He wrote a book, Demonology, and even passed a law banning the "use, practice, or exercise [of] any sort of witchcraft, sorcery, charm or enchantment". The ban carried the death penalty.


Look at the following photographs of witches in six different productions of Macbeth:





First, ask students to write the five senses on a piece of paper and under each one write a descriptive phrase inspired by the photograph.

SIGHT: What do the witches look like? Describe their hair, clothes and faces - do they have beards?
SOUND: The scene opens with thunder. Can you also hear wind and rain? Can you hear the sounds of battles raging nearby? What do the witches sound like? Do they use incantations to summon spirits?
TASTE: In the current production, one witch enters licking her fingers which are covered in the blood of a sow she's just killed.
SMELL: Think of not just of the witches' dirty clothes, the ingredients of their cauldron, the rain-soaked heath but the metaphorical smell of excitement and fear.
TOUCH: Think of what the witches have thrown into their cauldron - a pilot's thumb, bits of pig, etc. Later they throw in a dragon's scale, goat's intestines, finger of birth-strangled babe, lizard's leg, newt's eye, toe of frog etc. (see Act 4 scene 1)

Next ask students to write a poem called The Weird Sisters, inspired by

the photographs

their descriptive phrases

Students can find their own rhythms and rhymes and do not have to imitate the beats or speech patterns of Shakespeare's witches in Act 4 scene 1 (the "Double, double, toil and trouble" scene).