I taste a liquor never brewed – From Tankards scooped in Pearl – Not all the Frankfort Berries Yield such an Alcohol! Inebriate of air – am I – And Debauchee of Dew – Reeling – thro' endless summer days – From inns of molten Blue – When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee Out of the Foxglove's door – When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" – I shall but drink the more! Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats – And Saints – to windows run – To see the little Tippler Leaning against the – Sun! As a poet, Emily Dickinson creates a buffet for the senses and the imagination in “I taste a liquor never brewed.” By her first implication, the reader knows that this poem does not refer to something natural, something “brewed” by man, but to the sense of something hard to define. This mysterious element combined with unusual imagery elicits a playful almost festive theme of the summer season. Dickinson persistently uses drunken imagery in all its connotations as a metaphor for the exhilaration she enjoys outdoors in the summer. She first mentions that nothing can compare to this heady sensation, no other emotion can “yield such an alcohol.” The imagery continues as she next mentions she is drunk on the very air and summer dew, “reeling” all season long in the “inns” or taverns under the sky. Dickinson even relishes summer more than the insects that thrive then. Lines 9 through 12 show how the bee has had his fill of “drink” from the foxgloves, and the butterflies now “renounce their drams” and can’t drink or even desire another drop. Yet Dickinson exclaims she’ll keep drinking—consuming, absorbing, enjoying all creation. So much of Dickinson’s description lies in tangible sensation. First person point of view pervades these first three stanzas, and this is part of the power of this poem. In line 1, Dickinson tastes this “liquor” of summer. In line 5, she is the one who is drunk on air and dew, and in line 12, she shouts that when the bee and butterflies are done drinking, “I shall but drink the more!” Her point of view is just that, not a commentary or guide to how the reader should feel about summer, but an exclamation of her intense emotion in a most unusual metaphor. However, the perspective of the final stanza shifts as Dickinson describes angels and saints in heaven gazing down through their “snowy Hats” or clouds and “windows” at her. As narrators, they in turn term her a “Tippler,” someone who makes a habit of drinking. Interestingly, a tippler isn’t an extreme drinker or drunk but simply a regular and daily drinker. The angels and saints witness her “Leaning against the - Sun!” not overcome and leaning against a bar or wall in a tavern, but against the sun itself, the epitome of the season. Dickinson is the one regularly “drinking in” the sun. So much of Dickinson’s description lies in tangible sensation, the taste of drink, or even physical movement, but not in color or sound. Yet the absence of these two senses does not diminish her apparent expression of heart-felt emotion. She remains wholly conjoined to the essence of summer. “For the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged from the waters of geologic ages, a human face was set toward it with love and yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious.” As she explores the life and land of her heroine Alexandra Bergson, Willa Cather creates an aura and mystique about the Nebraskan land itself in O Pioneers!. The land alone is fierce, ugly, sombre, even magical, but most significantly, it is dynamically alive. At first, Cather constructs a setting where the land appears as a separate woebegone entity: “the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness.” In its singularity, the land has doubtless endured without man. Cather describes it as a fact in itself “which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes.” Specifically, Cather relates how Alexandra’s father, “John Bergson had made but little impression upon the wild land he had come to tame. It was still a wild thing that had its ugly moods.” Yet the hardness of this pioneering life, the hardness of the land itself, did not overcome John Bergson. Emil asks his sister Alexandra, “Father had a hard fight here, didn’t he?” And she responded, “Yes, and he died in a dark time. Still, he had hope. He believed in the land.” This persistent belief and interaction distinguishes the land even further. As Alexandra and others engage and hope in the land, it responds in kind—“For the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged from the waters of geologic ages, a human face was set toward it with love and yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious.” The land affects Alexandra’s heart and spirit, and Cather alludes to the influence of God the creator, “the Genius of the Divide,” who is part of this burgeoning relationship. Cather clearly portrays Alexandra’s connection. As Cather depicts Alexandra’s vast and fruitful property, she reveals that it is “in the soil she expresses herself best.” Although Alexandra recognized her tie to the land, she ironically doesn’t want her brother Emil to share the same connection. She clearly expresses her demand, that he must never buy land or work the land, so that he could pursue life in freedom, in choice, unlike herself. Out of her father’s children there was one who was fit to cope with the world, who had not been tied to the plow, and who had a personality apart from the soil. And that, she reflected, was what she had worked for. She felt well satisfied with her life. Perhaps Alexandra felt that her tie to the land was more than an anchor, that it instead was a trap. She felt confined to her farm and the land, as did her older brothers. More than ever, the land tends to reflect not only the mood, but now the waning hopes of Alexandra. For her, the land is simply no longer a place of goodness and freedom. As time passes, Alexandra expresses a fatalism about the land, partly due to her experiences. After Emil and Marie are murdered, Alexandra grieves for months and becomes weary of life. Here returns her “old illusion of her girlhood, of being lifted and carried lightly by some one very strong . . . she knew at last for whom it was she had waited, and where he could carry her.” By description and inference, her lover appears to be the land in human form, for that is where she will be returned in death when he carries her away “one day to receive hearts like Alexandra’s into its bosom.” Once Carl returns and pledges himself in marriage, Alexandra confirms that her commitment to Carl would lessen her tie to the land. In the same fatalistic manner, Alexandra and Carl speak of how the land has taken the best of them with the deaths of Emil and Marie. Carl states that he felt “my blood go quicker . . . an acceleration of life” when he had been with them. Maybe the land was jealous of their lives, of how others felt alive around them, for they remember an account about the graveyard, about “the old story writing itself over. Only it is we who write it, with the best we have.” Both Carl and Alexandra appear reconciled with the outcome, as if the land is fed with the death of their best. Regardless of her grief and even change in circumstances, Alexandra is yet united with the land—“‘There is great peace here . . . and freedom,’ she tells Carl. ‘You belong to the land,’ Carl murmured, ‘as you have always said. Now more than ever.’” Alexandra remains a stalwart reflection of the land as it becomes part of her—“We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it—for a little while.” IN MY ANTONIA, WILLA CATHER'S PORTRAYAL OF THE LAND is blurred by its intercourse with character. Not only can the land be place, but it can also be soul, an emotional center for more than one character. For narrator Jim Burden, both Antonia and the Nebraskan landscape become a place of returning, equal with the past, yet most essentially a place known as home. The land is part of Jim Burden from his earliest memories, ones that indeed he returns to. When Jim first travels to Nebraska, his young mind is captured by the vast land, “There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.” Once he arrives at his grandparents’ farm and begins to explore the property and gardens, Jim realizes a peace and comfort there—“I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire.” More importantly, as Jim’s friendship with Antonia develops, their mutual experiences across the prairie tie them together, whether exploring for gophers and earth-owls or gathering insects. “How many an afternoon Antonia and I have trailed along the prairie under that magnificence!” Yet as seasons pass and they grow older, Jim pulls away from the land as he attends university while Antonia detaches herself for a short time as a hired girl. Their similarity ends there though. Jim’s distance from the land becomes permanent whereas a disgraced Antonia returns to the land to raise her daughter after the fiasco of a promised marriage. Though she could have abandoned her childhood foundation, she chooses a limited life. In a sense, the land becomes both a rescue and a jail, for though she has a livelihood, she has chosen a life without freedom where people gossip and judge and the land feels removed. "the old pull of the earth" Yet as she explains her choice to Jim, Antonia declares, “I like to be where I know every stack and tree, and where all the ground is friendly. I want to live and die here.” Here, Jim relates how he wishes he were a boy again where he “felt the old pull of the earth” and “that my [his] way could end here,” so that he could be part of both the land and Antonia’s life. Jim knows that he could have chosen to remain even though he doesn’t. For some reason, he sees the land as part of a past sense, not his present life. In a reassuring farewell, Antonia most clearly reveals the land’s ties, that Jim will always be with her just like her dead father because of what they experienced on this enigmatic parcel of earth. Her sentiments even echo Jim’s from long ago, the day he confessed to Antonia that he felt her father’s spirit “among the woods and fields that were so dear to him.” In their final reunion, we see how Jim’s return home is a return to the land and to Antonia. Through the final chapter, Jim vividly depicts Antonia as full of the “fire of life” and a “rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.” She is the one he could tell anything to, the soul mate, the “closest, realest face,” that sees him for who he is. Antonia has become an ideal for Jim, one that is reminiscent of not just the pioneers, but of something more ancient. She is a tie to a nourishing land, a place that through time has brought healing and life to Antonia, her progeny, and finally, Jim. Jim Burden in fact launched his narrative with this same conclusion—“this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood.” IF WE CANNOT HEAR GOD, DO WE BLAME HIM? Orual declares, “The gods never send us this invitation to delight so readily or so strongly as when they are preparing some new agony. We are their bubbles; they blow us big before they prick us.” This same fatalism is echoed in James 1:13-15 (ESV): Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. Not one of us is helped by blaming God. Orual’s domineering selfishness is key, and Ansit seems to be the only one to recognize it fully: “You’re full fed. Gorged with other men’s lives, women’s too: Bardia’s, mine, the Fox’s, your sister’s—both your sisters.’” Orual is angered and repulsed by this, but she can see it is true. Whether her obsessive love for Psyche or her controlling love for Bardia, Orual’s idea of love is wholly tainted. It brings death to all. And so, how can we like a character who has damaged so many, including herself? This is the distinctive point of Lewis’s tale. We don’t have to like Orual or agree with her or even hope for her, but we do need to see ourselves in her. If we read this myth as story only, then we have lost its moral lesson and the pending redemption. At the end of her reign, Orual finally realizes the futility of hiding from herself, “I did and I did and I did, and what does it matter that I did?” She simply has no concept of what trust nor rest is. She has struggled with this from the beginning. Just as Psyche exemplifies complete, even perfect faith, Orual cannot trust. On her first visit to the mountain, Orual declares she almost came to a full belief. The almost is conscious doubt. She knows Psyche is certain, and she knows she, Orual, is not. It is a sickening feeling, and Orual is filled with both horror and grief at the gulf between them, immediately blaming the gods, instead of herself. She cannot see that she has in fact made a choice to doubt. Moreover, when Orual returns to the mountain the second time determined to forcibly remove Psyche, she cannot see Psyche’s perspective nor can she truly see Psyche’s joy. Though Orual is certain she is right, she is blind. I John 2:8-11 says this is because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. Here, John reveals what Orual cannot know of herself yet—that she “hates” Psyche. This hatred incites her blindness, and by novel’s end, Orual herself confesses to Psyche that she has always been a “craver,” loving her only “selflessly.” From the first moments when we meet Douglas Spaulding, we know his life is one of imagination and adventure. In Dandelion Wine, Doug is tantalized by the summer season, and his full-bodied experiences entice the most reticent reader to enter again into a season of discovery. One of the most notable elements of Ray Bradbury’s fiction is this ability to depict the wonder and sometimes harsh reality of childhood through experience and imagery. We can relive our own childhood awakening through Douglas’s first summer moments. Riding in his Dad’s car through the countryside, Doug declares that “Some days were good for tasting and some for touching. And some days were good for all the senses at once.” This was that day for Doug where he literally became aware of every sight, sound, and taste about him in the woods. I, too, have shared in some of those childhood experiences. I remember going on fishing trips with my father and big sister in the early Mississippi morning hours to a local pond or practically anywhere he could drive his 1971 Chevy truck under an hour’s time. Even at five or six years of age, I could bait my own hooks with crickets and worms. The problem was that I was easily distracted by the wonder of where we were. I could sit on a bank and doodle my bobber in the water for a time, but almost always, I would leave my pole and wander a dirt path or two, investigating for critters or anything I couldn’t catch in my own backyard. For me, the freedom to explore my little unknown habitat, even for a morning, was a treasure. I could sit still and listen to the wind in the pines, the jays and their squabbles, the plunk of bullfrogs for what seemed an infinitesimal day. I could close my eyes and just feel the aliveness around me, the breeze, the humid liquid air, the sense of a twig in my hand as I dug in the dirt. Like Doug, I could then open my eyes and know that “absolutely everything was there. The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him.” It’s the utter sense of being fully awake and being wholly part of a place and moment in time. "Some days were good for tasting and some for touching. And some days were good for all the senses at once." Though Doug begins his summer declaring “I want to feel all there is to feel,” he soon discerns that time is slipping quickly by: “The only way to keep things slow was to watch everything and do nothing.” Through the experience of life and death in the town and their family, Doug and his brother realize that happy endings don’t always go with summer, but it is a part of awakening to life. On one of those same summer fishing days, I remember my first experience with death, and it too, startled me. I had been fishing with a juicy worm in the hot sun without luck when I suddenly felt my bobber jerk deep. I hollered for my dad who ran to help me pull the fish in. It was a red snapping turtle instead, and it was huge to my small eyes. As fascinating as it was, it wouldn’t let go of my big worm even though my dad tried to get it to bite a stick instead. That was one aggressive turtle, and it wouldn’t let go of that line. My dad later said that the turtle had never swallowed the bait nor hook but was just plain ornery. Though I was fascinated by their tussle, my dad shouted at me to get back, then he tried again to get that turtle to grab the stick, and it did. As soon as it crunched, my dad whipped out his Bowie knife from his boot and cut off its head right where it had extended its neck. I was mortified and sickened, for I had caught many a tiny box turtle in our yard as a pet kept for weeks at a time, and I sure didn’t understand my dad’s reaction. I just sat down in the dirt and cried out of pure shock as my dad flung the parts in the lake. Like Tom who saw a different part of his mother’s character one night at the ravine or like Doug who loses a friend to a move or as both as they lose neighbors and their own great-grandma to death, so many changes come at unexpected times, and something as pleasant as a summer day can devolve into horror and grief. The wonder and simple pleasures of summer then can not only be contagious at times as we revel in creation and experience, but also tempered by the realities of life and death. ALTHOUGH WRITTEN IN THE 1300s, the works of Geoffrey Chaucer have endured as classic literature for centuries. Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales are particularly memorable because of the characters’ camaraderie and their vivid and witty language. As a storyteller, Chaucer has deliberately created vignettes and settings for each tale and teller that reveal not just a sense of amusement, but also a sense of morality. From the first scene at the Tabard Inn, Chaucer is our narrative host, welcoming his readers to relax as one of his travelers and enjoy passing the time with telling tales: “The rooms . . . of the inn were wide; they made us easy . . . [I] was soon one with them in fellowship.” Once the stories begin, the mood changes easily with each teller. In “The Pardoner’s Prologue,” Chaucer paints the picture of a flagrant hypocrite. By his very diction, Chaucer is clearly amused. As a church man, the Pardoner describes himself employing just a choice amount of Latin and displaying fake church relics, all lending to the guise of holiness. Chaucer exaggerates the Pardoner’s abilities as he claims that whomever wears a certain holy glove will “multiply his grain” as he sows seed. Most blatantly, the Pardoner broadcasts that his listeners can be freed from greed if they give their money to him. Chaucer persistently replays the Pardoner’s words for emphasis and also humor: “I preach against the very vice I make my living out of—avarice.” In “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” Chaucer uses the Wife’s free banter to insert humor, irony, and a fair sprinkling of scriptural misinterpretations. The Wife frequently mentions her five husbands and jokes that “God bade us all to wax and multiply,” a purposefully enigmatic command when used by her. She further justifies the number of her marriages since King Solomon had so many wives and jokes that “would to God it were allowed to me to be refreshed, aye, half so much as he!” At all times, the Wife maintains her imperfections and declares that she must always be married. Chaucer seems to revel in the creation of her crude yet jovial monologue. In the midst of these prologues, though, a sense of Chaucer’s morality becomes clear. He overtly recognizes virtue and vice. The fact that he can make light of religious characters like the Pardoner suggests that in order to ridicule hypocrisy he had to have known truly virtuous religious leaders or sincere believers to contrast them with others who abused the faith or their religious authority. Characters like the Pardoner and the Wife know of religion and apply it for their own whim and benefit though they are, after all, on a pilgrimage. And yet the fact that he describes characters, like the Clerk, who are sincerely religious, does further the idea that Chaucer finds him and others like him admirable, for “a tone of moral virtue filled his speech and gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.” CHAUCER UNIQUELY BLENDS A SENSE OF HUMOR AND MORALITY WITHIN HIS TALES. He may play with the appearance of sin, and even amorality, in some of his characters, but as for himself, Chaucer asserts in the General Prologue that he is “most devout in heart” as he and the group begin their light-hearted pilgrimage. 1656. Three wives, blindness, prison, and an epic. Before Milton went completely blind, he married his second wife Katherine Woodcock, the love of his life. She died, also in childbirth, less than fifteen months later, and her daughter lived only a month. Milton still had three school-age daughters to care for, yet he spent his time writing for Cromwell and for himself. By 1658, however, Cromwell died. His son was unable to rule, and Charles II was restored to the throne. Milton's life was in very real danger now because of the propaganda pamphlets he had written for the Cromwell administration, and he was imprisoned for three months. In the meantime, his spoiled girls were in need of discipline and attention, so in 1663 amid his daughters' protests, Milton married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull. It was a marriage of convenience. Milton was independently wealthy by this time and could provide a stable home while Elizabeth could care for his girls so that he could have freedom to both tutor students and write without interruption. According to letters at the time, Milton would compose parts of his epic in his mind before he slept, and upon waking, would recite entire passages of blank verse to his aides and secretary. In that manner, all of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained (1671) were written. From the time he was a teen until now, he had determined to write an epic and he did. Fifty years in the making, Paradise Lost remains one of the most eloquent and lush features of the English language. Of True Religion and Poems, &c. upon Several Occasions were published in 1673. In summer 1674, the second edition of Paradise Lost was published in twelve books, two more than the first. Milton died peacefully of gout in November, 1674, and was buried in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate. His funeral was attended by "his learned and great Friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of the Vulgar." A monument to Milton rests in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey. 1639. Power, parties, politics, pamphleteering, and one Mary Powell. Milton has returned to England in the midst of civil war. The power of one political party wavers, and the other takes control. One king loses favor and his head, and a usurper rules for ten years. Yet Milton continues writing, first for the Presbyterian movement and then under employment to Oliver Cromwell. On his own time, Milton wrote about his poetic intentions in his notebooks. Contemplating subject matter for a great English work, he wrote about the idea of an epic about King Arthur and listed nearly a hundred stories from biblical and British history as potential subjects for a drama. However, Milton could not turn his back on civil injustice. Putting aside his own creative ambitions to focus on prose—as he called it, the work of his left hand—he devoted himself to the betterment of his country, advocating the unorthodox belief in the freedom of speech with the means of the day, pamphlets. Milton first became involved in the religious dispute on the Presbyterian side by writing a series of pamphlets in 1641-42. As well as being learned and intellectual, they are filled with clever and amusing rhetoric, satire, and invective. His views here are clearly Puritan and attack the idea of Catholic idolatry that he and others felt was increasingly present in the Church of England. At this stage Milton hadn't rejected monarchism, and he believed that the Anglican bishops were a threat to England and to the king. In 1642 after a brief courtship, Milton married, perhaps unwisely, the seventeen-year-old Mary Powell, a girl from an unintellectual, royalist family. Her family supported the Stuart kings and the Anglican Church, and it's truly a wonder that they were ever married. Apparently, Mary left him after a short time and returned to her family for three years. Divorce was never mentioned, and due to the civil war, she was unable to safely return to London until 1645, the same year Milton published his first volume of poetry. Milton and Mary were reconciled, and they had three daughters and a son who died in infancy. Mary herself died in childbirth in 1652. Soon after Charles I was beheaded in 1649, Milton was appointed secretary to the Council of the State of the Commonwealth, a committee led by Cromwell. This was the beginning of years of busywork. Every document of government business was transcribed into Latin before it was filed as a permanent record, and Milton was most adept. For whatever reason within a few years, Milton gradually began going blind. Though his government work gradually ceased, his writing did not. His vocation was more clear than ever. On His Blindness (1655) WHEN I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one Talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He returning chide, “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed, And post o’er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait.” *My thanks to Katherine Fletcher of Christ's College, Cambridge, and her lively biography written for http://darknessvisible.christs.cam.ac.uk/miltons_life.html. WHY SHOULD WE READ MILTON? Well, why not read about him first? His life story beats the plot of the best scene-stealers written—a privileged life, three wives, civil war, spoiled children, prison time, blindness, and a burning God-given desire to write poetry. 1608. John was born into a devoted Puritan family of some wealth with a home in London and one in the country. His father was an established scrivener and published musician. His mother Sara was known for her benevolence and kindness. They hired tutors and found John excelled at most anything, especially dealing with words and language. He wrote poetry for fun and eventually at age 12 studied at St. Paul's, an elite school in London. In 1625, Milton attended Christ's College, Cambridge, at the old age of 16. However, his good looks interfered with his social skills, and he found his quick temper wasn't a help either. What to do? Argue with your favorite tutor, throw a punch, and get expelled for a time. At least that's one story. Apparently, John was also scornful of the other young men and their carousing, let alone what he felt was inferior curriculum. But in spite of this, Milton's first serious poems were written. Here is one of his simplest written at the age of 15 in the English of his day. No formal sonnet but an easy flow of couplets. A Paraphrase on Psalm 114 When the blest seed of Terah's faithfull Son, After long toil their liberty had won, And past from Pharian fields to Canaan Land, Led by the strength of the Almighties hand, Jehovah's wonders were in Israel shown, [ 5 ] His praise and glory was in Israel known. That saw the troubl'd Sea, and shivering fled, And sought to hide his froth-becurled head Low in the earth, Jordans clear streams recoil, As a faint host that hath receiv'd the foil. [ 10 ] The high, huge-bellied Mountains skip like Rams Amongst their Ews, the little Hills like Lambs. Why fled the Ocean? And why skipt the Mountains? Why turned Jordan toward his Crystall Fountains? Shake earth, and at the presence be agast [ 15 ] Of him that ever was, and ay shall last, That glassy flouds from rugged rocks can crush, And make soft rills from the fiery flint-stones gush. Once he graduated with his M.A. in 1632, he spent six full years at his family's country home, at their expense, mind you, studying all subjects and writing in preparation for his vocation. He knew he would be a poet. But we can't all live off of our parents until age 30, so Milton left on a European grand tour for over a year, spending months in Italy, even meeting with Galileo. But the return home to London was disheartening. Not only was England in civil war but Milton had to find work for the first time ever. Does tutoring your own nephews count? *My thanks to Douglas Bush for his notes and thoughts on Milton's life and to Katherine Fletcher of Christ's College, Cambridge, and her lively biography written for http://darknessvisible.christs.cam.ac.uk/miltons_life.html. “SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES " Imagine a smoking cauldron rising from the trap door of the Globe’s center stage as you hear echoes of thunder from the attics. Three men cloaked in black rags and tattered capes slink onto the stage as they chant. It might be the middle of the afternoon, but Shakespeare has created an atmosphere of mystery and foreboding that is only perpetuated by the regular presence of these eerie witches throughout Macbeth. Later editions call them the Weird Sisters derived from wyrd in Old English meaning fate. That alone gives us pause. Are they meant to resemble the sisters of Fate in Greek myth? If so, then they have power to determine destiny. The first folio editions (1623) of Macbeth, however, never use the word witch but rather weyward. Shakespeare repeatedly refers to them as the weyward sisters yet costumes them as recognizable witches. His broad audience of commoners, merchants, and nobility would all readily acknowledge their supernatural presence, the stuff of superstition. Here they stand ready to inspire fear and stir the pot of plot. But are the witches effective as antagonists just because of the typical evil they represent? Many Shakespeare scholars identify the witches as master manipulators of men’s lives, able to deceive and even perhaps control them. If we view them as Shakespeare intended, as the weyward sisters, however, then their ability to tempt and entice has a greater spiritual import. A truly wayward soul is likely to lead others astray along its already crooked path, but three sisters? The influence is compounded. The weyward sisters are confident in their influence, for “The charm’s wound up,” and we know the stage is set and ready for Macbeth’s choice. It seems unfair that the same Macbeth who slew traitors left and right and who “unseamed” the rebel MacDonald in the first scenes should be the target of the witches. Before King Duncan even publically honored Macbeth, the witches approached him on the outskirts of a bloody battlefield. To be told you have received a new title in addition to the one you have and then to magnify that success with a prophecy to be king is that much the greater temptation. Shakespeare never crafted the weyward sisters as the ultimate controllers of Fate after all, but as an influence equal to temptation, a temptation that potentially controls destiny through sin. Though the witches continue to reappear throughout the play and thicken the growing evil, Shakespeare adds even more as he introduces their leader Hecate in Act III. Pouty as a child, Hecate is at first upset that she wasn't included in the fun of enticing Macbeth, yet her continued presence is a more dire warning. This goddess of witches, a sometime queen of the underworld, is as intent as the weyward sisters to cement Macbeth's demise. No, it’s not enough that Macbeth seeks the witches for affirmation and guidance. One choice of ambitious desire or greed leads to another, the choice to control others, to control Scotland. With the shedding of blood, Macbeth's first sin in murdering the divine King Duncan, he has fully opened the door to evil and every dynamic sin. In fact, the witches’ relationship with Macbeth is much like the progression of sin. It all begins with one choice. For Macbeth, the greater question is what propels this desire, this clinging to follow the wayward choice? Somehow the witches knew of Macbeth's hidden ambition and desire for power. They recognized his rebellious nature. And that perhaps is the root of things for Macbeth. As a rebel, he was self-sourcing and independent from a king appointed by God or by God himself. His self-will was practically a root sin. It's as if the noble warrior of the first scenes had a narcissistic evil twin noted for pride, arrogance, sabotage, and conspiracy. In the end, the weyward sisters were indeed effective in destroying Macbeth, but only because he listened to and followed their words. Perhaps the witches wanted to annihilate Macbeth's family line and Scotland itself. But in the end, the true heir Malcolm, blessed by his father Duncan—thus a divine choice—returns with reinforcements. Shakespeare is careful to show us that Macbeth's choices did not destroy the country, yet Macbeth himself remains a moral lesson of not only the snowball effect of sin, but also the importance of choice. |