Macbeth Act 1 Scene 1

¶ … Versions of MacBeth

Act I, Scene I of MacBeth is a short act that introduces the audience to three characters who play small, but significant, roles in the play. The three witches, sometimes referred to as the weird sisters, appear in a desolate location, with a storm brewing in the background. Their conversation is without any substance; instead, it is clear that the audience is viewing them after they have already done something, but what is left unspecified. Instead, they are setting the time and place for their next meeting. They indicate that they will meet with MacBeth. They also foreshadow that good will be bad and bad will be good, though whether they are going to cause this disruption or are merely able to predict that it will occur is not specified.

In the 1971 version of MacBeth, directed by Roman Polanski, the three witches are on a beach, stormy weather in the background, and engaged in something that appears disgusting, but not necessarily bad: they are burying an arm with a knife. The implication seems to be that they have robbed a grave to get the arm, though the possibility is that they have killed a man to get his arm. The witches are represented by a very typical mythological version of three female witches as the stages in a woman's life cycle- one young and beautiful, another in middle age and unattractive, and the third an old woman. I found it to be very appealing in setting a realistic potentially supernatural overtone. These witches were clearly engaged in a ritual, which they believed had power, but whether or not they had a supernatural power was yet to be seen.

The 2010 version of MacBeth, directed by Rupert Goold took an interesting perspective. It is shot in the manner of traditional horror movies and the weird sisters are portrayed as nurse/nun killers, though I could not tell whether they were committing a mercy killing because his wounds were fatal or whether they were simply murderers. Rather than opening with the three weird sisters, alone, they have a victim and they are in a bustling hospital. However, they quickly become the only living beings in the room. I liked that their intent was ambiguous when they killed the victim. However, I felt that the pulling down of the masks and the playing to the camera stripped all of the subtlety from the scene. This feeling magnified in intensity as they walked, as a trio, towards the camera, radiating menace and danger. I felt as if one of the classic works of the English language had been transformed to fodder for a horror movie. However, liking horror movies, I would have been interested to see the next few scenes in order to see how the director approached them.

While I at least found Goold's version intriguing, I loathed the 2006 version of MacBeth. I found it to be so childish that I thought it was disrespectful to the source material. The witches, dressed in their schoolgirl clothing, seemed so immature that the Shakespearean English seemed out of place and was stripped of all of its powers. This was magnified by the director, Geoffrey Wright's choice to have them desecrating a cemetery, which seemed childish and pointless. I was reminded of one of those horror-movies spoof films; like the witches were going to leave the cemetery, go use some drugs, and then engage in a gratuitous sex scene before using a Ouija Board to conjure a demon that would eventually kill them. To me, it would be difficult to find a less appropriate way to film MacBeth.