“We Three”: The Mythology Of Shakespeares Weird Sisters

Shamas, L. (2003).“We Three”: The Mythology Of Shakespeares Weird Sisters. (Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2003).

The Weird Sisters, from William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth are, arguably, the most famous trio of witches in English literature. Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters are a complex trinitarian mythological construction, a unique amalgamation of classical, foildonc, and socio-political elements. This dissertation is an archetypal exploration of the Weird Sisters; by examining this feminine trio through the lens of mythology, new insights about their significance may be understood.

Early accounts of the Weird Sisters, dating from 1420 and including Raphael Holinshed’s 1577 History of England, Scotland and Irelande, assign archetypal value to the Weird Sisters as goddesses of destiny, nymphs or fairies. Due to many factors, including the influence of King James I, these archetypes were subsumed; in his 1606 tragedy, Shakespeare transforms the Weird Sisters from goddesses into “witches” lead by Hecate. Thus, Shakespeare joins an Anglo-Saxon mythological trio to a Greco-Roman threeheaded deity, fusing together aspects of two separate pantheons in order to create a unique cosmology involving female trinitarian archetypes. In Macbeth, the bard depicts both a pale “lunar” Hecate, and a black “underworld” Hecate, related to Nox. The Weird Sisters function as mimetic doubles of the Triple Goddess in the drama, which brings added resonance to their ‘Double, Double” refrains; their actions may be categorized as predominantly Hecatean. The Weird Sisters’ four scenes, including their famous cauldron ritual, are replete with Hecatean symbolism. Shakespeare mines trinitarian aspects in stage directions, dialogue, plot, ritual, and symbols. Hecate, Nox, and other archetypal Triple Goddess figures from Celtic mythology are part of Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters’ archetypal resonance. In their final scene, their trinitarianism and their unholy ghosts directly collide with the Holy Trinity.

Eleven classical female trios from mythology are related to Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters. There are connections between fairy tales and the bard’s trio as well.

From L. Frank Baum’s 1900 creation of the Wicked Witch of the West (who was a witch sister) in The Wizard of Oz, to the 1998 Warner Brothers hit television show “Charmed” (about three modern witch sisters), popular culture imagery from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries mirrors a continued fascination with Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters.