e be limited to a consideration of such
features of the subject as appear to throw light upon the
supernaturalism in "Macbeth." This consideration will be carried out
with some minuteness, as certain modern critics, importing mythological
learning that is the outcome of comparatively recent investigation into
the interpretation of the text, have declared that the three sisters who
play such an important part in that drama are not witches at all, but
are, or are intimately allied to, the Norns or Fates of Scandinavian
paganism. It will be the object of the following pages to illustrate the
contemporary belief concerning witches and their powers, by showing that
nearly every characteristic point attributed to the sisters has its
counterpart in contemporary witch-lore; that some of the allusions,
indeed, bear so strong a resemblance to certain events that had
transpired not many years before "Macbeth" was written, that it is not
improbable that Shakspere was alluding to them in much the same
off-hand, cursory manner as he did to the Mainy incident when writing
"King Lear."

84. The first critic whose comments upon this subject call for notice is
the eminent Gervinus. In evident ignorance of the history of witchcraft,
he says, "In the witches Shakspere has made use of the popular belief in
evil geniuses and in adverse persecutors of mankind, and has produced a
similar but darker race of beings, just as he made use of the belief in
fairies in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' This creation is less
attractive and complete, but not less masterly. The poet, in the text of
the play itself, calls these beings witches only derogatorily; they call
themselves weird sisters; the Fates bore this denomination, and the
sisters remind us indeed of the Northern Fates or Valkyries. They appear
wild and weather-beaten in exterior and attire, common in speech,
ignoble, half-human creatures, ugly as the Evil One, and in like manner
old, and of neither sex. They are guided by more powerful masters, their
work entirely springs from delight in evil, and they are wholly devoid
of human sympathies.... They are simply the embodiment of inward
temptation; they come in storm and vanish in air, like corporeal
impulses, which, originating in the blood, cast up bubbles of sin and
ambition in the soul; they are weird sisters only in the sense in which
men carry their own fates within their bosoms."[1] This criticism is so
entirely subjective and unsupported