“Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

Even if you know nothing about Macbeth, you know the iconic image of its three witches, reinterpreted and reimagined across centuries of pop culture. I believe my first encounter with them was, oddly enough, in a 1990s animated adaptation of Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree stories, where three cackling crones welcome visitors to the Land of Spells. You may have met them elsewhere – as Simpsons characters in a “Treehouse of Horror”, as the Carrionites in Doctor Who, or as Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters, perhaps.

Well, they’re iconic for a reason. Their prophecies set the play in motion and raise the question that directors, actors, and high school English classes have grappled with since the 1600s: are the witches controlling Macbeth, or does he have free will?

To cut to the chase, I believe Macbeth does have free will, especially a Macbeth in the twenty-first century. As society has become more secular, we’ve moved away from assuming all witches are automatically evil and out to get you. I think we can come up with something more frightening now.

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are two of the most coveted roles in theatre because, unsettlingly, we recognise something of ourselves in them. We all know the frustration of feeling overlooked, let down, or treated unfairly by the world. Most of us have fantasised, even if just for a moment, about taking what we feel the world owes us.

The world of this production is timeless, but it is also inspired by the eleventh-century historical figures that Shakespeare based his characters on. In their era, Scotland followed the law of tanistry. The throne did not pass to the monarch’s eldest son, but to the “tanist” – a male relative (for instance, a cousin), who was elected based on merit. In this context, the witches do not tempt Macbeth with an impossible dream, but embolden him to seize a crown that he had come to expect would be his.

Another key inspiration is the historical family structure of the Macbeths, and my answer to what ever happened to Baby Thane? Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth was based on Macbeth’s wife, Gruoch – but she had been married before. Gruoch’s son from her first marriage went on to succeed his stepfather Macbeth as king (although Malcolm did assassinate him rather quickly). Placing Gruoch’s son in the world of our play pokes at Macbeth’s insecurities even more. His wife can bear healthy sons – just not with him. In a society where masculinity is bound to virility and lineage, this deepens his sense of inadequacy and fuels his paranoia around losing control of his legacy.

So, all this to say, when we relate to the Macbeths most, when we’re at our angriest and most insecure, what do we do about it?

In today’s algorithm-driven world, we’re exposed to a cacophony of voices like never before, and the ones we choose to engage with shape our ideologies. When you’re at your lowest point, which voices sound the sweetest? The ones that challenge you? Or the ones that reassure you, validate you, and tell you that however “black and deep” your desires are, you are right to follow them?

You have free will. Do you listen to your humanity or to your witches?

Grace Edwards