.

I have been thinking about Macbeth lately and even revisited a partial screenplay where I adapted the play into a modern setting, preserving the text and playing with new meanings for old words.

One aspect of the play that is quite often cut down when adapted to the screen—either silver or electronic—is the scene where the witches are shown on the heath.

Apple TV

Now, the witches aren’t given much in the way of character, not even names, but they are given history and motivations that vanish when the scene is cut down.

When they “meet again” upon the heath, they bring each other up to date on what they have been doing in each other’s absence.

One has been slaughtering pigs, robbing some farm of food, or income, or both. For a farm, to lose a swineherd can be fatally disastrous.

Another witch recounts being denied chestnuts, and the trio conspire to ensure that the woman who denied the witch the desired nut suffers as his ship is blown about on the seas, lost and wrecked.

These witches are engaged in evil. They are cruel, malicious beings that delight in the terror and disaster they create for poor, pitiful humans. These are the beings that waylay Macbeth on the heath and fill his mind with prophecy of kingship.

When these aspects are removed from the adaptation, the weird sisters become nothing more than gumball prophecy machines, devoid of agency or intent. We are never left to question: Why? Why did they stop Macbeth? Why give him that foreknowledge of his future?

I think this is an artifact of our modern age. We are perfectly willing to let the witches come in and tell the character the future, but we want the tragedy to be that his ambition is his downfall, not the possibility that the tragedy is that Macbeth is trapped by fates beyond his understanding or control.