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 to the start of the performance, so one of Shakespeare's crew blew a trumpet five minutes before the performance started. Five minutes standing in the pit would seem like ages. Most of the people watching the play would be illiterate but they would know what the trumpet meant and would have known that it was going to start soon.
At the start of the play there is an explosion of thunder and lightning. To achieve the sound effects of the thunder, Shakespeare, or one of his crew, would roll a cannon ball across the dressing room to create the rumble of thunder. In those days people were really gullible and believed everything they heard and saw.
After the thunder and lightning the three witches come onto the stage. The witches are the first characters on stage so they set the scene and introduce the other characters ,they act a bit like the narrators and set the scene straight from the start. When they came onto the stage everyone would be shocked by the state they were in. In this scene Shakespeare communicates with the audience telling them that the witches can look into the future and can cast spells, which makes the audience hate them even more. The witches come onto the stage in fog and mist and start chanting ‘ When shall we three meet again, in thunder lightning or in rain?’. This is connected to the thunder and lightning at the start of the scene and brings a lot of fear into the audience right from the start.
Each witch had a familiar. A familiar was an evil animal or bird which spied on other people and knew what they were doing. The witches having familiars in the play made the audience even more scared of them because they believed that the witches are marked by the devil , as belonging to him by a red mark or an unusual characteristics in exchange for familiars to act as spies. The three familiars were a cat called “Gray malkin”, a toad called ”Paddock” and the third one is not shown which makes the audience suspicious. They believed that the witches could communicate with the familiars. The witches were most likely to have black cats. This was because black cats were considered to have the force of evil. The witches would be lonely and have known to talk to their cats for company .This again would convince the audience that they were marked by the Devil and could cast spells and could turn people into other beings.
In the play the witches use apparitions to foretell Macbeths doom. By Shakespeare using the apparitions its provides clues for the audience that the witches can look into the future and predict what’s going to happen. The first apparition in the play is an armed head. The armed head is portraying Macbeth getting killed by Macduff and Macduff putting Macbeths head on a pole with his armour on. The second is a bloody baby, which has been born by caesarean and this was how Macbeth was born and in the play Macduff tells him he was ripped from his mothers womb before he was meant to be born. The third apparition was a baby with a crown on its head and a tree in its hands which represents a battle when the army cut down and moved a forest and used it as a disguise. Macbeth was tricked and Macduff had the throne and it was Macbeth’s fault for killing King Duncan in the first place.
I think that Macbeth is to blame for the killing of the king and also the others he killed. Some people would say I was wrong but Macbeth was the person that killed them, not his wife or the Witches. His wife helped him take the throne and set up people but she wasn’t the person who committed murder. As for the witches, they persuaded him to do it but he actually carried it out. Macbeth gets punished for the killings which he deserves, he loses his life. His wife also kills herself to avoid taking any punishment. The witches get away with it.
In the play the witches speak differently from the rest of the cast because Shakespeare wants to tell the audience when the witches are on and to create a sense of fear in the audience and to keep the audience focused on the play. The witches sometimes speak in riddles. Some of the riddles were mostly in iambic rhythm but had a trochaic opening . Iambic rhythm sounds like chanting , for instance “When shall we three meet again , In thunder lightning or in rain , when the hurly burly’s done , when the battles lost and won” . In the play witches use a number of riddles. In some of the riddles there is a use of antithesis, for example at the start of the play ‘ Fair is foul and foul is fair’ by using antithesis they are trying to contrast the opposites. The witches also use alliteration of the letter ‘f’. Also it is repeating the words ‘fair’ and ‘foul’ when Macbeth comes onto the stage and says ‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen’. In some of the witches rhymes they speak in rhyming couplets, this means that there are two lines that rhyme together. For example “When shall we three meet again, in thunder lighting or in rain”
The rest of the cast speak in blank verse, this is so that the witches stand out speaking in rhyme. Blank verse has 10 syllables to a line and it has no rhyme.
Shakespeare’s purpose for the witches in Macbeth is to create a sense of fear and evil to draw attention away from Macbeth’s actions. For example, when Duncan is dead, Macbeth is upset by his actions and tries to wash away his guilt “out damn spot” as he washes his blood from his hands. The witches bear the brunt of the audiences anger for Duncan’s’ murder.