Macbeth by William Shakespeare (Supernatural beings)

 

Macbeth

by William Shakespeare

(Supernatural beings)

 

The supernatural, according to The Oxford Dictionary, “includes all those phenomena, which cannot be explained by the accepted laws of natural science or by physical laws.” A belief in the existence of the supernatural: ghosts, fairies, witches etc., has been universal in all ages and times. Therefore, it was also in the age of Shakespeare in which there was almost a universal belief in the presence and power of the unseen. All classes of people, including the king, shared this belief because it was a witch-struck age. Not only the common person, but also the learned and the cultured one believed in the supernatural. Elizabethans believed in the power of demons, ghosts, witches, wizards etc.

The supernatural in Macbeth is of two kinds first, the witches and second, the Ghost of Banquo. The witches in their appearance and in their supernatural powers confirm substantially to those of popular superstitions. The witches are poor and worn out, thin and ugly. They are neither men nor women as they dress like women, but grow beard like men, which makes one, like Banquo, doubt their sex. They are gifted with supernatural powers. They can move invisibly through the air, ride brooms, control the storms and the most important thing that they can foresee the future, cast spells and make apparitions rise. To do their charm, they use toads, snakes, grease from gibbets, etc. They are weird uncanny creatures. They owe their powers to their masters, Queen Hecate. They are beings with supernatural powers.

Shakespeare practices disguise in his comedies and supernatural in his tragedies. Shakespeare was a professional playwright and he writes according to the taste of his audience and spectators. The age of Shakespeare was a superstitious one and the people of this age believe in superstitions. There were both type of people: superstitious and the intellectuals who do not believe in superstitions. The superstitious enjoy the tragedies because of the supernatural and the intellectuals take the supernatural as the outward manifestation of the inward feelings. In short, we can say that Shakespeare was a practical and popular theatre dramatist and a man of contemporary interest.

Shakespeare uses supernatural in his tragedies but this does not mean that he personally believed in these beings. The supernatural are introduced symbolically and with a purpose. He associates them with fate and destiny. He makes these invisible beings visible. They are not independent but serve the purpose of the play. They give the play an atmosphere of awe, mystery and misery. We cannot think of his tragedies without supernatural.

The witches in ‘Macbeth’ have their own character. They influence the character of the protagonist Macbeth. They are the evil powers, passionless and pitiless. They are the agents of Satan. In appearance they are ugly and in character malicious. Macbeth dismisses them as, equivocating fiends. In the play, their role is of ‘tempters’.

The supernatural or the fiend sisters influence Macbeth and not Banquo. Macbeth is a child of darkness and not of light. They are the outward manifestation of Macbeth’s inward villainy. That’s why he goes to them to know about his future. Shakespeare poses supernatural in the play to throw a light on the character of Macbeth. 

The presence of supernatural gives plays a kind of sublimity, grandeur and mystery. The witches are the most powerful agent in the play but they have their limitations too. They influence only the thoughts of the protagonist and not his actions. They are not independent agents but are the subordinates of the constitution of Macbeth’s nature. Hecate, which is the chief of the witches, accomplishes the task of Macbeth’s misery.  Macbeth is blind to the meaning of his doom because his doom is veiled in paradoxical statements of the witches. In all we can say that Shakespeare has used the popular beliefs of his age but with a poet’s imagination.