The Witches

One of the most successful elements of this year's study of Macbeth has been the HL section's exploration of the witches. In the first session on the witches, blogged about below, the students created the chaos of words and sounds that comes at the beginning of Act IV. In last week's lesson, they looked at images of the witches from different productions and considered the effects of the "spectacle" created by the witches' words and appearance. Let me dwell on that lesson for a moment.

One of the reasons this has been a fun topic to explore is that I'm not sure what I feel about the witches. The nature of our discussions has been "exploratory" in that we have tried out several interpretations of their role, and in today's discussion the students came up with several powerful messages Shakespeare might be trying to send through the way he portrays them.

Last week I'd been thinking a great deal about the witches and I told Monica that I was considering their use of "spectacle" - they are, in the words of a student, "so dramatic all the time". Monica pointed out how politicians also rely on spectacle, citing Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, as an example of someone who presents a certain persona in order to achieve a specific end. I loved the way she spoke about his rather goofy public persona as a way to gain the attention and affection of his colleagues and constituents, and how she pointed out that although he makes himself seem like the "everyman", he makes decisions in the interests of a very few.

In class the next day we started out looking at these images of Boris Johnson:

We discussed how this person seemed to be presenting himself, and why he might choose to present this way. They had excellent comments, especially from M. who talked about how politicians like Johnson know the power of press coverage, and the power of a media persona which sets them apart from the others. M said that Johnson's popularity probably comes from his goofiness, his being so willingly different from other, stiff politicians. 

Then I asked them to analyse this headline about Johnson in pairs for phrases they thought were key to understanding him as a politician. 

Then we turned to our correspondent on the ground in London, Monica, to tell us about her impression of him as a leader. She pointed out that he had made many promises but then not taken much action to improve London in the ways he said he would. 

We discussed what the purpose of Boris's spectacle,  might be:

We then turned to the witches to discuss their spectacle. They worked in groups to describe and analyse the effect of the spectacle created in each of these productions of witches: 

These images and the students comments about their appearance and impact are now on the classroom wall. 

Here are the comments students made about the witches after the discussion:

Now, compare these musings to some of the brilliance from today's discussion, which truly felt like the culmination of these weeks of class and contemplation:

The witches are an audience to Macbeth's undoing. They perform one small action at the beginning, then sit back and watch Macbeth on his way to his downfall. We also as the audience witness the downfall. 

After J. made this comment, I decided to ask what they thought Shakespeare wants us to think about as we watch Macbeth's downfall. Here are their comments:

Humans are weak because they believe in irrational beings if the message those beings tell will serve them. 

Human actions are the most important, even in a world in which there are magical or supernatural actions going on. The human behaviour still  has the most profound consequences. (I thought this was an incredible comment, also from J.)

Power is based on influence, not on actual physical strength. Influence often comes from the way someone uses language. So Shakespeare's message is, language is power. (Brilliant, commented by M.)

Given the nature of the witches, the message we get is to be skeptical of the power of language. Don't trust everything we see and hear right away.

Simple ideas, and small suggestions have large ripple effects.

I cannot tell you how happy I was with the discussion on the witches today. We weren't even planning to talk about them, but someone brought them up, and I figured it would be excellent preparation for our HL writing tomorrow. I could not have presented their final comments on the role of the witches any more coherently than they did. I look forward to seeing what they write tomorrow.