I had wondered why Macbeth contained a scene with witches. Near as I could figure, Shakespeare was associating Macbeth–who, with his wife, killed the king–with an undesireable element (the witcyhes).
However, a relative has brought up the issue of literacy in Shakespeare’s time, claiming that in the Western world generally only the rich sent their children to school–and peasants couldn’t afford to go see Shakespeare’s plays, let alone afford a Bible, or a First Folio, to read.
How would I go about finding statistics on general litreracy in Shakespeare’s time?
Part of it was that the new King of England, James I (James IV of Scotland), subscribed to the mania about supposed witchcraft. He’d even written a guide to witch-hunting.
Poor and uneducated people (from London, anyway) certainly attended Shakespeare’s plays. One of Shakespeare’s strengths was that he could write to entertain those people - they were called groundlings because they stood on the floor nearest to the stage - and also fulfilled the expectations of the educated and rich people sitting in the balconies, who expected more poetry.
There are actually a bunch of witch scenes in Macbeth, not just one. (And there’s one particularly lame scene that Shakespeare didn’t write.) I’m not sure, though, what connection you’re trying to draw between literacy or poverty and the presence of the witches in the play.
Good, I’m glad I’m not the only one. dougie_monty could you lay it out a little clearer for us slow folk?
That was a BIG part of it. It also portrayed evil forces toying with natural succession which was also a bit of a suck-up; James I/VI was not altogether popular as Elizabeth’s (probably unnamed) heir and this lumped those who would take his throne in with Satanic hags. I’ve wondered (I’m sure there’s a dissertation somewhere but I’m too lazy to look for it) if the character of Lady MacBeth may have been in part patterned on James’s mother, a woman he never knew but who his keepers brought him up to despise, and perhaps even on Elizabeth I and Mary I as James wasn’t exactly enlightened in his views of women in power.
James I/VI also believed that he had the power to cure scrofula, which was also worked into the play (only it’s the albino virgin of Albion Edward the Confessor who has the power in the play, but still a King of England).
Returning to the OP, however, witches were the car chases of their time as far as getting butts in the seat. The century from 1550-1650 was the “golden era” of witchburning- various estimates are that an average of several hundred per year were burned in that time (though usually in waves- a few years would go by with few trials if any and then another in which 2,000 people might be killed) and they were not abstract Halloween critters even to the literate. (Sir Isaac Newton, though he was born a half century later, was one of the most brilliant and learned men in England and believed in witches, while many English and European Protestant intellectuals had come to associate Catholic rituals and nuns with all manner of occult nonsense and the Pope as the anti-Christ or at least an ally thereof and some Catholic intellectuals saw Protestant leaders as pretty much the same thing.)
Since Shakespeare seems decidedly humanist I think it was first and foremost a practical matter. It gave the public a great thrill to see these hags up close and it ingratiated the loyalty with the Crown (who remember could do far more than close your show or give you a bad thesaurus spawned review if he was displeased). There were similar spins on Shakespearean plays under Elizabeth, most notably the villification of the title character in RICHARD III (because the queen’s grandfather certainly wouldn’t have been anything but a hero) and the totally political spin in HENRY VIII.
During my own college days, our E-Lit Prof pointed out that Anthropologists had verified the accuracy of many of Shakespeare’s references to withcraft & fairy lore, pointing out that they corresponded with traditional beliefs in perfect detail.
Prof discussed the possibility that Shakespeare might have practiced the Old Religion, himself.
I make no claims, but I cannot see that it is out of the question.
I, too, am rather confused by the connection between literacy and witches, but Keith Wrightson’s English Society 1580-1680 has some figures. There seems to have been considerable variation between urban and rural areas, as well as, obviously, between people of different social status:
Some figures from 1642 (when literacy was probably a bit higher than it had been during Shakespeare’s time, but not hugely so):
Shakespeare was, of course, writing primarily for a London audience (except when his company was on tour), and it’s unlikely that the poorest Londoners would have had much money to spare for playgoing, so going by these figures, it seems likely that most – though by no means all – of his audience would have had some level of literacy.
More about the politics of MacBeth and witchcraft: as stated above, James was the author of a “bestseller” of sorts entitled Dæmonology, which raises a point: while literacy was far higher in 1606 than it would have been a century before thanks to the expansion of printing and relative peace and the rise of the merchant class, one of the things people chose to read about was… witches! 
There’s rarely been a sharp rise in critical thinking to correspond with a sharp rise in information technology.
Besides which, witches really aren’t that illogical a concept. People did not understand the germ theory of disease (they didn’t even know blood travelled in arteries and veins and capillaries or that women did anything in conception other than receive the tiny human a man deposited in her and most didn’t know [or much care] about heliocrentism, etc.) but they knew that somehow when things were going well a lot of people got sick anyway or that really bad unexpected things happened with weather and the like, so they figured, quite rightly, that the causes of these things were invisible. Not a big leap to figure that harmful things caused by invisible forces must be caused by willfully malevolent forces, and the father of all malevolent invisible forces is of course Satan and therefore if one would profit by them they must be Satanic and etc etc ad nauseum. While it was completely wrong (except, of course, for the part about Jews using the blood of Christian babies in their ritual- ben Gurion and Golde Meir tried to work that into the Israeli Constitution [why do you think Madonna/Esther waited til AFTER she became a Kabbala scholah to adopt that kid?]) witchcraft actually had its own logic.
Off base a bit, if you (dougie) have never seen the movie Shakespeare in Love, while it’s far from a movie biography but rather a light romantic fantasy based on Shakespeare’s life it’s actually extremely historically accurate when it comes to how plays were produced and presented. The Globe, The Swan, Blackfriar’s, etc., all had the same basic plan. Unlike modern day “inspired by” outdoor Shakespeare theaters such as The Oregon Shakespeare Festival or Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, these theaters, inspired by the I_I shaped inns where plays were presented on wagons by traveling companies at the opposite end, were mostly standing room only. The wealthier patrons could buy tickets for benches underneath the roofs and awning surrounding it but the cheap seats were eitehr literally just enough room to stand for three hours and watch the play (remember that people were nowhere near as sedentary in his day so this would not have been quite as uncomfortable to them as it is for us) or at most thin benches, and even though the theaters were small you could pack a lot of people in when you don’t need comfy chairs and you didn’t have to charge much. Actors, even successful ones like Burbage, weren’t paid nearly as much as successful stage actors today; a star would usually receive a very small stipend (then as now actors in lesser roles often had other jobs) and then a benefit performance (meaning that he received a percentage of the gate for a particular show, a long lived tradition- the performance of Our American Cousin that Lincoln was killed during was a benefit performance for a cast member [star Laura Keene had just had one herself] which was not an act of charity but a significant portion of their contract and their income, and an actor’s fans would often try to go to that particular performance.)
Anyway, the point is there was theater admission (not seating) for all price levels. Even the lower classes could have attended Shakespeare’s plays if they wanted to- it would have been more on par with the price of a movie today rather than the price of professional theater (where you have to pay the union minimum wages or better for actors and stagehands and their insurance and their gasoline and roadies if it’s a tour and the author’s royalties, etc.). Also like a movie theater (or more like a ball park) today the theater made a big chunk of its money from concessions sold by folks walking down the aisles. Today a theater performance usually begins with a request to turn off cell phones/take cough drops and peppermints out of the wrappers now before the show begins/no photography or talking/etc. and in Shakespeare’s time there was a similar announcement that nobody, including prostitutes (who did frequent theater), was to sell their wares without the permission of management, no fighting or farting or excessive drinking, etc., because it could get pretty rowdy.
The term “command performance” was quite literal as well. If a play was particularly popular then obviously the crown or a very high ranking/rich nobleman was not going to go stand among the hoi polloi and risk getting mugged or diseases or the rain or the like, so they would order the entire production brought to their estate (at their expense, of course). James I/VI LOVED MacBeth and is known to have ordered several command performances of it at his court even when it was not running at one of the theaters. One thing proponents of the ‘Shakespeare was not written by Shakespeare’ theories often use is that any man of common birth who wrote plays loved so much by royalty would surely at the least have been knighted and given big pots of money as a reward (and while Shakespeare did alright- very comfortable, actually- he wasn’t loaded and wasn’t “Sir William”) though this would have been unnecessary if he was already a nobleman.
Also, James I/VI was a direct descendant of Duncan and Malcolm, which is why both are saintly in the play. The real MacBeth didn’t murder Duncan unless you count Duncan’s death in battle with him during a civil war murder (which James certainly would have), and the real MacBeth ruled for many years and made Scotland stable enough and rich enough that he was able to travel to Rome for a year (where it’s recorded he spent gold like it was water). And James FIRMLY believed witches were plotting against him.
Slight hijack, but MacBeth is long overdue for a big budget Branagh/Orson Welles style film version. I never cared much for Polanski’s version but something along the lines of Welles’s Voodoo/Haitian theme might be cool or some other revisionism. I have never seen Throne of Blood: does anybody know if it has the witches? (I’ve no idea what the role of witches would have been in samurai culture, if there was one.)
Shakespeare was actually sort of a hack, the Stephen King of his day. He wrote gory, trashy stuff like Titus Andronicus as well as the more lofty works of Hamlet and Macbeth. Audiences haven’t changed all that much since Will’s time. People are still entertained by violence, gore, lust and betrayal. He had a beautiful command of the English language, which is why his works have survived, but he knew the audience he was writing for, and he was writing to entertain, not with an ear cocked toward a future reputation for “fine literature.”
The wealthy didn’t really go to the plays to get a dose of “high culture.” Going to a play was a chance to see and be seen by other rich folks. Contempoary descriptions show that the audience often talked through the whole play (especially if there wasn’t anything juicy going on), often heckling the actors or even going onstage themselves.
Sampiro, I really enjoyed that post, being fascinated as a teen with all things Elizabethan and Shakespearean.
I’ve always prefered to compare him to Spielberg, myself.
I’d say yes and no to that. Where I said “rich people,” I probably should have said “other writers.” I don’t think he was trying to bolster his future reputation, but I do think he wanted to try to impress his contemporaries.
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The wealthy didn’t really go to the plays to get a dose of “high culture.” Going to a play was a chance to see and be seen by other rich folks.
Abso-fricking-lutely. The best version I’ve seen is a “based on” movie called Scotland, PA , which was very good, but I think I and about 20 people in New York were the only ones who saw it.
James Marsters, who in addition to being the scrumdiddlyumptious Spike, is actually a fine Shakespearan actor, has talked for a number of years about wanting to direct himself in the title role on film. I’m not sure what the status of the project is, but as of a year ago it sounded fairly promising. I quiver with anticipation!
But Branagh’d be good, too! Frankly, in my (wet) dreams, Branagh would be directing Marsters as Macbeth, and himself playing Banquo.
It’s got kind of an underground following. I found the movie disappointing, all things considered. But I agree that in this conspiracy-oriented age, somebody ought to do Macbeth on screen.
See also Men of Respect and Throne of Blood.
I was trying to illustrate the purpose of the scene of The Weird Sisters at the beginning of the play, as a device to put Macbeth in a bad light. I promptly received a comment about how at this time not only were most people illiterate, except for the royalty and the nobility, but people in general were, so this relative claimed, ignorant and impressionable enough to be swayed by street-corner preachers, for example. I had tried to make the point that before the Reformation, Europe was solidly Catholic (at the most Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, thanks to the rift that developed in the 11th Century), but also that Jews and people of other religions were few and far between until the emergence of Henry VIII and Martin Luther.
I learned a lot about medieval history in grade school and high school, and have never liked having any of it contradicted by claims made by people of my parents’ generation. (In 1960, when I was in 6th Grade, I came home and told my parents that the name Eisenhower was German for “iron hewer.” (I got this from a contremporary issue of Junior Scholastic.) My dad, who should have known better (at least better than to confuse us by contradicting what we learned in school), denied this and insisted that Eisenhower was German for “ice house.”)
Does that scene really put Macbeth in a bad light, though? I know what you’re saying, he’s going around with unsavory characters. And later, he relies on them more explicitly. But they’re plotting to find him, for reasons unknown, and I think he would look worse if he wasn’t caught up in supernatural events. If he’d just decided on his own to commit regicide, he’s fully responsible for his own actions. Instead, they put the idea in his head - my reading of him is that he never would have thought of it otherwise - and so you get a man who is conflicted (“if chance will have me king, why, then chance may crown me without my stir”) and tempted, by his wife and probably by evil forces, into doing something he knows is wrong. The Sisters are probably there because King James liked witches, but they allowed Shakespeare to make Macbeth a more complex character.
That’s debatable. I think it was Niven that pointed out that black magic style witches are simply bad business sense for the Devil. It’s also illogical because there was no evidence even then; they may not have known what causes disease, but that doesn’t make it logical to blame witches with no evidence for it; you could blame cobblestones or the day of the week or long fingernails with just as much “logic”.
I sense then that The Weird Sisters were a counterpart to Lieutenant Thomas Keefer in The Caine Miutiny; that they goaded Macbeth to murderous ambition the way Keefer goaded Maryk to commit mutiny against Captain Queeg.
No-no-no.
Fortunetelling, astrology & the like were taken very seriously in Shakespeare’s time.
So, I see the Weird Sisters as symbols for predestination ( a religious doctrine also taken very seriously at the time).
Well, I remember how Mad commented about Macbeth in a “primer” article:
The witches are stirring up trouble for Macbeth.
They tell him he will be King.
Macbeth does not want to be King.
He only wants to be Thane of Cawdor.
Whatever-in-heck that is! [ 
]
But Mrs. Macbeth wants him to be King.
Wants, wants, wants.
You know the type.
Pushy!