Themes
The overall theme of Wyrd Sisters concerns the effect words can have on reality. This idea is explicitly stated by the Fool, who says that "the past is what people remember, and memories are words. Who knows how a king behaved a thousand years ago? There is only recollection, and stories." Duke and Lady Felmet then commission a play to serve as propaganda, portraying the witches of Lancre and the former king as evil, and the duke as virtuous.
The text makes oblique references to the life and works of William Shakespeare. It borrows themes and sayings from Macbeth, including the "dagger of the mind", from Hamlet, including the ghost of the dead King and the play-within-a-play, and from King Lear, with Duke Felmet descending into madness in the company of his Fool. In addition, the company of actors includes a playwright by the name of "Hwel", or "Will". The adult Tomjon wants to build a theatre called "The Disc" in Ankh-Morpork, a reference to the Globe Theatre in London.
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Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)