The Three Witches or strange Sisters are characters in William Shakespeare's play Macbeth (c. 1603–1607).
Their origin lies in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland and Ireland. Other possible sources influencing their creation include British folklore, contemporary treatises on witchcraft, Scandinavian legends of the Norns, Greek and Roman myths concerning the Fates, and the Bard's own imagination. Portions of Thomas Middleton's play The Witch were incorporated into Macbeth around 1618.
Shakespeare's witches are prophetesses who hail the General Macbeth early in the play with predictions of his rise as king. Upon committing regicide and being seated on the throne of Scotland, Macbeth hears the trio deliver ambiguous prophecies threatening his downfall. The witches' dark and contradictory natures, their "filthy" trappings and activities, as well as their intercourse with the supernatural all set an ominous tone for the play.
In the 18th century, as Shakespearean as well as supernatural art began to become popular, the witches were portrayed in a variety of ways by artists such as Henry Fuseli. Since then, their role has proven somewhat difficult for many directors to portray, due to the tendency to make their parts exaggerated or overly sensational. Some have adapted the original Macbeth into different cultures, as in Orson Welles' presentation making the witches voodoo priestesses.
Film adaptations have seen the witches transformed into characters familiar to the modern world, such as hippies on drugs or Goth schoolgirls. Their influence reaches the literary realm as well in such works as The Third Witch and the Harry Potter series.
Film adaptations have seen the witches transformed into characters familiar to the modern world, such as hippies on drugs or Goth schoolgirls. Their influence reaches the literary realm as well in such works as The Third Witch and the Harry Potter series.
The weyward Sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the Sea and Land...
In later scenes in the first folio the witches are called "weyard," but never "weird." The modern appellation "weird sisters" derives from Hollinshed's original Chronicles in which they are referred to as weird sisters.
Shakespeare's principal source for the Three Witches is found in the account of King Duncan in Raphael Holinshed's history of Britain, The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587). In Holinshed, the future King Macbeth of Scotland and his companion Banquo encounter "three women in strange and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder world" who hail the men with glowing prophecies and then vanish "immediately out of their sight."
Holinshed observes that "the common opinion was that these women were either the Weird Sisters, that is… the goddesses of destiny, or else some nymphs or fairies endued with knowledge of prophecy by their necromantical science.
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