Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare that narrates the rise to power of the eponymous main character, who, driven by his ambition, becomes the King of Scotland by killing the previous king.
It was written in the 17th century, amidst the Renaissance, a period in which women were expected to fulfill a passive role, one in which all they could said was expected to follow the male input. As such, Macbeth plays with the expected role of women: the female characters in Macbeth are not confined to being in the background, and as such they violate the natural order and bring chaos. The characters of the Three Witches, Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff are used in the play to explore the aspects of female behaviour and how they may affect the world of order.
To begin with,
the Three Witches represent the forces of chaos, forces of femininity that disrupt with the patriarchal political world established by men.
They are the not only the first women to appear in the play, but the first characters to appear in the play at all: the Three Witches. These witches are introduced by thunder and lightning and exit the stage with the line “Fair is foul, and foul is fair / Hover through the fog and filthy air,” (I, ii, 12-14), denoting the chaotic atmosphere they intend to create, in which what seems good is bad, and what seems bad is good. They later hail Macbeth with the prophecy that he will eventually be a king with the phrase “All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!” (I, ii, 50), which has a great impact on him as he start
considering about murdering Duncan, the current King of Scotland: “Present fears /Are less than horrible imaginings / My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, / Shakes so my single state of man that function / Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is / But what is not.” (I, iii, 137-142) Their last apparition is in the fourth act, in which they show Macbeth a series of apparitions that have to do..
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