Weird sisters macbeth12/27/2023 Apparently because the name "Urthr" is made from that form of the verbal stem which appeared in the plural of the past tense, this goddess came to be looked upon especially as the fate of the pase ( des Gewordenes). The loss of an initial w disguises the identity of the word with the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fate, "Wyrd." Both words are to be connected with the Latin vertere, the German werden, the Icelandic vertha, and the Anglo-Saxon weorthan. In the Scandinavian mythology, as it was preserved in Iceland, "Urthr" was the eldest and the most prominent of the three Norns, or sister-Fates. But afterwards the common opinion was, that these women were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say) the goddesses of destinie, or else some nymphs or feiries indued with knowledge of prophesie by their necromanticall science, bicause euerie thing came to passe as they had spoken." ![]() This was reputed at the first but some vaine fantasticall illusion by Mackbeth and Banquho, insomuch that Banquho would call Mackbeth in iest, king of Scotland and Mackbeth againe would call him in sport likewise, the father of manie kings. Herewith the foresaid women vanished immediatlie out of their sight. "Then Banquho What manner of women (saith he) are you, that seeme so little fauourable vnto me, whereas to my fellow heere, besides high offices, ye assigne also the kingdome, appointing foorth nothing for me at all? Yes (saith the first of them) we promise greater benefits vnto thee, than vnto him, for he shall reigne in deed, but with an vnluckie end neither shall he leaue anie issue behind him to succeed in his place, where contrarilie thou in deed shalt not reigne at all, but of thee those shall be borne which shall gouern the Scottish kingdome by long order of continuall descent. But the third said All haile Makbeth that heereafter shalt be king of Scotland. "It fortuned as Makbeth and Banquho iournied towards Fores, where the king then laie, they went sporting by the waie togither without other companie, saue onelie themselues, passing thorough the woods and fields, when suddenlie in the middest of a laund, there met them three women in strange and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder world, whome when they attentiuelie beheld, woondering much at the sight, the first of them spake and said All haile Makbeth, thane of Glammis (for he had latelie entered into that dignitie and office by the death of his father Sinell.) The second of them said Haile Makbeth thane of Cawder. The following passage from Holinshed will especially concern us: The evidence of this work is decisive in favor of changing weyward and weyard to weird. ![]() Shakespeare's source for the story of Macbeth was Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, published in 1577. In the second of these lines we have a personification, but the conception is of more than one Wyrd.Ī passage in the Scotch translation of Vergil's Æneid, written about 1513 by Gawin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, translates "Parcæ" (Book III. Wyrd is "the lord of every man." The word is also a common noun each man has his own wyrd, or destiny. In Anglo-Saxon literature, "Wyrd" is the name of the personified goddess of fate. It was Theobold, the dearest foe of Pope, who saw that Shakespeare must have written weird, and that this rare word had been changed because of "the ignorance of the copyists." Modern editors accept the suggestion of Theobold but I believe that the full force of the word weird is often unapprehended, even by special students of the play. In that edition the word is weyword in the first three passages in the play, and weyard in the last three. Stranger still, _weird_ does not appear at all in the only authoritative text of the tragedy, that of the First Folio. ![]() 136), and once in the phrase "the weird women" (III. The word occurs six times in this play as usually printed: five times in the expression "weird sisters" (I. Strangely enough the word weird has come into modern English entirely from its use in Macbeth. New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1904. The following essay is reprinted from The Views About Hamlet and Other Essays.
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