Origins
The name "weird sisters" is found in most modern editions of Macbeth. However, the first folio's text reads:
- 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. It should be noted however that modern English spelling was only starting to become fixed by Shakespeare's time and also that the word 'weird' (from Old English wyrd) had connotations beyond the common modern meaning.
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"
The concept of the Three Witches may have been influenced by the Old Norse skaldic poem Darraðarljóð (found in chapter 157 of Njáls saga), in which twelve valkyries weave and choose who is to be slain at the Battle of Clontarf (fought outside Dublin in 1014).
Shakespeare's creation of the Three Witches may also have been influenced by an anti-witchcraft law passed by King James nine years previous, a law that would stay untouched for over 130 years, as well as folklore or simply his imagination. His characters' "chappy fingers," "skinny lips," and "beards," for example, are not found in Holinshed. The real-world location of Brodie, located between Forres and Nairn in Scotland, is thought to be the meeting place of Macbeth and the witches, commonly known as Macbeth's Hillock. (Map) Traditionally, Forres is believed to have been the home of both Duncan and Macbeth.
However by some interpretations (e.g. by Samuel Coleridge Taylor) the three weird sisters should be seen as ambiguous figures since they are never clearly described as witches by themselves or other characters in the play.
Read more about this topic: Three Witches
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)