Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itselfĪt first, Macbeth is reluctant to resort to violence in service to his ambition, but with prompting from Lady Macbeth, he slides down the slippery slope of sacrificing others for his own ends. THE WITCHES IN MACBETH: SAMUEL JOHNSONS NOTION. Their origin lies in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England. The witches eventually lead Macbeth to his demise, and they hold a striking resemblance to the three Fates of classical mythology. To prick the sides of my intent, but only The Three Witches, also known as the Weird Sisters or Wayward Sisters, are characters in William Shakespeare 's play Macbeth (c. At various points, Macbeth himself is aware of this tension, as you can see in these lines where he describes how he needs his ambition to succeed:
But then the Witches call him thane of Cawdor and king hereafter thus prophesizing that he will be promoted to thane of Cawdor and then king. The first Witch calls him thane of Glamis, already his title, because of Sinel’s death. Eventually, this pursuit of goals becomes Macbeth’s hamartia, or fatal flaw.Īs the play progresses, the tension increases between ambition and what must be sacrificed to achieve a goal. In Act 1, Scene 3, the three Witches greet Macbeth in a startling and unexpected way. It was said that the Three Witches could speak of the future and his wife knew of this and thought of it as truth so, she influenced her husband to make them true. Together with his wife, Macbeth commits increasingly more violent acts to achieve his goal, sacrificing everything for ambition. Three Witches In Macbeth In the play of Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, Macbeth is confronted by Three Witches and his wife, Lady Macbeth. The witches tell him he will become king, planting the seed of ambition in his soul. The title character of the play Macbeth is a Scottish general who listens to the prophecy of three witches. One of the strongest themes in Macbeth is ambition and the destruction that can happen when hubris and greed for power go unchecked.
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