Topic brief
A Jiang Lens evidence brief for this topic, built from source tags, transcript matches, and linked source refs.
A transcript-matched topic anchored by excerpts such as "...us to come back to in discussion. One topic is the witches. What do you make of them? Because, you know, they seem to..."
Showing 18 evidence items
No matching evidence on this topic page.
A transcript-matched topic anchored by excerpts such as "...us to come back to in discussion. One topic is the witches. What do you make of them? Because, you know, they seem to..."
Bromwich leaves the discussion with two unresolved interpretive centers: whether foreknowledge from witches compromises responsibility, and why children matter to the play's contrast between nature and the supernatural.
Bromwich reads the witches naturalistically: Shakespeare represents a society in which witch belief is real to the characters, and Macbeth's special danger is that he is especially ready to internalize and obey prediction.
In response to the witches question, Bromwich uses Banquo's line about the earth having bubbles to show that Shakespeare includes an ordinary skeptical stance alongside Macbeth's susceptibility.
Bromwich's settled view is that the witches should be understood through belief: people believed in them, and once belief is strong enough, the experience becomes real in practice whether or not the metaphysics are resolved.
"...us to come back to in discussion. One topic is the witches. What do you make of them? Because, you know, they seem to..."
"And Macduff's answer is very interesting answer. He has no children. So what is this about the idea of children as something deeply related..."
"...about fortune and that brings us to the role of the witches i think shakespeare there too um is being naturalistic by his lights..."
"...the 17th century so uh you know the the belief that witches operate is is real um what credit does shakespeare give to it..."
"...so I'll first point out the naturalistic almost dismissal of the witches that we get from Banquo uh in lines that run something like..."
"...of that haunting gives us more than anything sure about the witches but as I say my my own um I think true doctrine..."
"...of the deed he will perform almost as soon as the witches plant the idea that he might become Thane and then become king..."
"...him that he got this strange hint from the from the witches she said i'm no longer part of nature come you spirits that..."
"was uh you know apt prey for the witches um but you know treat uh treat the witches in that regard as something like..."
"...yes yeah so I'm interested in your your perception of the witches so witches we could say they're humans but you know um we..."
"...Shakespeare. That half of his female characters are either bad like witches or Lady Macbeth. And then the other side, you find Portia in..."
"...you know right right right and then later trans i guess witches were burning it because she didn't support trans it went full circle..."
A source-grounded reading of a five-hour hybrid workshop that begins with Macbeth and ends by turning Purgatory, free will, tragedy, envy, and generosity into one model of human transformation.
This topic page is a discovery surface. For generated synthesis, cite the human-readable source reading or lens page. For Jiang-spoken claims, cite the transcript segment, source ref, and YouTube timestamp. Raw text and Markdown mirrors are fallback surfaces for tools that cannot read this HTML page.