"Macbeth"における魔女達について

概要

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When we read Shakespeare's Macbeth, one of the things which draw our attention is that most of the characters in this play are rather featureless in a way except Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. But among those characters, we see quite uncommom and peculiar creatures appear on the stage and play an important role in this tragedy. They are 'three witches'. Today witches are regarded as supernatural and unreal creatures, but Shakespeare has given them most unique characteristics and let them act as a kind of manipulators who reduce Macbeth into ruin. Of course they do not manipulate our hero, Macbeth, directly, but just suggest or make a prophecy of the coming fate of Macbeth. He gradually falls under the influence of their magical power and commits one crime after another inspite of himself. We wonder why Shakespeare attaches so much weight upon these unnatural characters. The present writer thinks it is not only because of Shakepeare's own view on man's fate, but also because of the Elizabethan mental picture about the world as well as man's fate, that is, a cosmological thought handed down from the Middle Ages. Now in this small paper we are to make a brief study of some aspects of the "witches" which are not familiar to us.
東京家政学院大学の論文