Black, and Midnight Hags?

Abstract

Verdi saw the Witches in Macbeth as a third protagonist. Fortunately, his London theatregoing took place in an era when the Witches were once again played seriously. Between the closing of the theatres and the later eighteenth century, the Witches were a vehicle for comedy and spectacle. In Davenant’s version they made a flying entry, and sustained the pantomimic effect with song and dance routines. Dr Johnson, in his notes on Shakespeare, does not doubt ‘that the scenes of enchantment, however they may now be ridiculed, were both by himself and his audience thought awful and affecting’. But Johnson was writing at a time when the Witches were still presented in folk costume for laughs. It was not until 1768, for the first time in well over a century, that the Witches were again rendered seriously in a production which had William Powell and Mrs Yates as principals.