What is Shakespeare's purpose for the witches in Macbeth?

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What is Shakespeare's purpose for the witches in Macbeth?

In 1606 Shakespeare had the difficulty of trying to catch the attention of the audience in the play Macbeth.

 In the play there are three witches, who are the main characters in the play. Shakespeare’s purpose for the witches is to set the scene from the beginning with a menacing atmosphere. Witches were despised by the audience and they brought a sense of fear into the play. The witches were played by men because women weren’t allowed to act in those days and by using men they would already have the witches characteristics.

 The witches were made to be ugly. They had “choppy fingers” , “skinny lips” and  “beards”, all abnormal for women. The convenience of the witches having  ‘beards’ was that they did not need a razor which could be fatal and lead to death .They were “withered” and they had “wild clothing” which would make the audience even more tense.

The Globe Theatre was round, which meant that the stage was in the centre of the theatre and the actors had people all around them. This meant that the actors had to keep on turning around so the crowd would not get bored or angry. If the actors didn’t turn around then the crowd would throw things at them.

In the Globe Theatre the performances started at 2pm. The pub, opposite the Globe Theatre opened at 9am. So, by the time the play started a lot of the people were drunk and did not know what they were doing and would make a lot of noise.

Once the play started there would be three thousand people in the theatre and about two thousand people on the floor. The people that were on the floor were called groundlings and the place were they stood was called the pit. The pit was full of the drunken poor people. There were constant fights in the pit and it was very noisy. It cost about 1d to get into the pit and in there were people selling things, such as fruit ,vegetables, and animals .There were many pickpockets who would steal from other people. The conditions in the pit were dreadful. It smelt of dirty bodies and rotten vegetables. There was no roof over the pit, so if there was bad weather you would get very wet and cold and it would wind up the crowd and make them more restless.

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There were other places where people could watch the play and these were the sitting areas .The first sitting area was where the better off people went. They had a roof over their heads and had room to move and it cost about 2d to watch the performance there. The third area was where the very rich went. They had a roof over their head as well as cushioned seats. If you wanted to watch the play from there you had to pay about 3d.

 Because the crowd were very impatient Shakespeare had to tell them when they were close ...

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