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

Abstract

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 article shows how Shakespeare encodes within Macbeth a psychological and linguistic account of evil – one that quietly subverts the theological orthodoxies of his sovereign. This reading is illuminated through a comparison with Othello, in which Iago explicitly describes his destructive manipulation of others as working "by wit and not by witchcraft". In Macbeth, too, Shakespeare presents witchcraft as the planting of word-seeds in receptive minds. In the context of teaching Shakespeare in South Africa, the author reflects on how students may come to understand an apparently theological, teleological problem in psychological and linguistic – humanistic – terms.