The Gunpowder Plot of 1605:
In 1605, "a religious cold war existed between England and papal Rome. A cell of papists..., directed from Rome by skulking Jesuits, had trundled keg after keg of gunpowder into a vault under Parliament. A munitions expert named Guy Fawkes was discovered with the detonating materials, ready to ignite the fuse (train) when the King was addressing his Parliament, in presence of the Prince his heir and all leading members of his court. It was important to address the crisis swiftly.... King James and his counselors promoted an official interpretation of the Powder Treason" (Wills)
King James did not want " a country full of private vengeance-seekers initiating a reign of terror against Catholics. In fact, the Plot gave him his best opportunity to separate loyal and moderate Catholics from the mad extremists of the Plot. For this reason he had his propagandists stress that the Plot was less the result of Catholic theology than of a specific intervention by the devil, using only the most corrupt or malevolent elements of the Catholic community. For this effort, the isolation of Jesuits as the specific source of evil was very important.... The permanent discrediting of these troublesome underground avtivists could be one benefit derived from the Plot...
"The Plotters aimed at the government in England because it was (in James's eyes) the strongest bastion of the Reformation. If England could be defeated, Rome could have its way.... The King, as head of both chirch and state, imposed his views.... James intended his reading of the plot to become central to England's sense of identity. That is why he kept up a long campaign of indoctrination, to inculcate the lessons of the Plot as a statement of his kingdom's place in God's providence."
Witches
According to Wills, "the witches of 1606 are central to their plays, and they have a political role. There are witches in every one of the dramas I am calling Gunpowder plays. Witchcraft was part of the ideology of the Powder Treason.... The Plot's hatching took place at a Black Mass.... The witches prompt Macbeth to regicide--the very sin the devil guided the Plotters to, through their oaths at a Black Mass.
"Battlefields were magnets for witches--for the same reason that shipwrecks were, or gallows, or prostitutes' lairs. They were all good places for collecting the most vital ingredients for witches' work--dead body parts, and especially dead bodies outside consecrated ground.
"Hecate's appearance in Act Four, Scene One has been criticized as stuck uselessly onto the scene's action. But bringing in the higher powers to preside over a scene is not unusual in demonic plays.... In Macbeth, where appeal is made to the art the witches practice (4.1.50), Hecate, as self-proclaimed mistress of that art rightly presides."
Wills explains that the witches of 1.1are located in the balcony above the stage: "Hover through the fog and filthy air." They plan to meet "ere the set of sun," which is difficult, Wills says, since witches need the night. However, their daytime meeting will be in stormy, foggy weather, which solves the daytime problem. And the storm at the beginning of the play "is a constitutive element of diabolic activity" (Wills).
Lady Macbeth
Wills speculates that Shakespeare must have had a great boy actor in this year who was able to play Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, and perhaps Lear's Fool. The witches, however, were played by men. Notice that Banquo remarks on their beards in 1.3. The same boy actor who played Lady Macbeth probably doubled in the part of Lady Macduff. This, just as Lady Macbeth thinks about tearing her child from her nipple and dashing it to the ground, Lady Macduff sees that happen to her child (Wills).
Lady Macbeth certainly tries to become an intimate of evil, a communer with murdering ministers, fatal ravens, spirits who will give her suck. Does that make her a witch? Not in any technically legal or theological sense... There is no reciprocal activity of the sort Macbeth engages in at the necromancy. She is a witch of velleity [in her wishes] and gestures, while he is one in fact. She forms no pact with the devil. Hecate does not appear to comfort her (Wills 83).
Lady Macbeth's sense of guilt: "She never became a witch, like her husband; but she entertained witch fantasies, which have come back to haunt her. She acts like a witch when she tries to rub out or efface her "damn'd spot" (5.1.35). The bloody spot most feared by those suspected of witchcraft was the devil's mark left on them when they sealed their compact" (Wills 87).
Macbeth becomes a witch
"When Macbeth sets out consciously to 'know, by the worst means the worst' from the witches (3.4.133-34), he is exposing himself to... [become] guilty of necromancy--i.e., of witchcraft. He appeals to the witches in the name of their art, of their dark knowledge, no matter what its source (4.1.50-51):"
"The basic art of conjuring involved the creation of the charmed circle.... Where is the circle in Macbeth's conjuring scene?...The witches trace the circle with their dance--they "charm" the precinct they define as they move all around it. 'Round about the cauldron go,' they sing as they make triple repetitions of triple formulae, calling on their familiars.... It seems likely that Macbeth, when he enters, steps unconsciously into the charmed circle, and the witches circle him with their triple 'Hails,' cutting him off from Banquo.... In the conjuring scene itself...they simply circle the cauldron while they throw in vile ingredients.... Macbeth is drawn into the circle where all ills congregate.... Macbeth goes forth from the conjuring scene with a new sense of power.... He has pawned his soul to get the precious knowledge they seem to have given him" (Wills 63-74).
Works cited:
Wills, Gary. Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare's Macbeth. Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1995.