John Antony Goedhals

A humanistic reading of witchcraft in Macbeth, with reference to Othello

This article argues that beneath the spectacular surface imagery of bearded hags and cauldron-boiling in Macbeth lies a sustained philosophical exploration of the power of language to shape reality. Drawing on Diane Purkiss's scholarship on early modern witchcraft, James I's Dæmonologie and Holinshed's Chronicles, the...