What is the influence of the WITCHES in the play MACBETH?
Well, the mystique and evil held by the witches foreshadows things becoming sour for Macbeth and his wife. Their rhyming chants and supernatural prophesising set up an atmosphere of unrest, and outline the events that will come later in the play. Macbeth has been cursed by the witches and then supernatural beings like the ghost and unnatural dreams befall him. His wife becomes embroiled in her husband’s evils which turns her mad (another supernatural omen). All the omens featured in the play obviously come from the contextual influence of Shakespeare’s time (eg. witches, ghosts, dreams, insanity), and basically serve as a literary device for foreshadowing future events in his tragedies.
