The Reception of the Weird Sisters in Welles's Macbeth and Kurosawa's Throne of Blood

Abstract

This paper discusses the reception of the Weird Sisters of William Shakespeare's Macbeth (1606) in Orson Welles's Macbeth (1948) and Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (1957) as supernatural beings with complete control over the destiny of mankind and over nature through a feminist, psychoanalytic, and semiotic reading of the play and the films. Unlike Shakespeare's witches, Welles's witches and Kurosawa's forest spirit do not acquire their knowledge and powers from Hecate or any masters. Since the word "weird" is derived from the Old English "wyrd" meaning "fate," it associates Shakespeare's and Welles's witches, who are referred to as the Weird Sisters, with the Fates in classical mythology and signifies their control over the fates of other characters. Welles's witches shape Macbeth's destiny by making his effigy, a clay doll, which they fashion out of the ingredients they put into their boiling cauldron at the opening scene of the film. In Kurosawa's film the forest spirit's singing and spinning a thread of life in the midst of the forest not only draws on the etymology of the word "weird," but also reminds us of mythological witches Kybele and Circe. Welles's witches and Kurosawa's forest spirit dominate both film adaptations through the agency of their extensions and substitutes as well—specific natural elements, such as the thunder, lightning, rain, fog, forest, and birds. Among other cinematic techniques, Welles's high-angle shots and Kurosawa's jump-cuts portray the dominion of the witches and the forest spirit over Macbeth and Washizu and over time and space.