3 Beehler

Historical Nexus: Bewitching Nurses in Rupert
Goold’s Visual Medium of Macbeth

Paul A. J. Beehler
University of California, Riverside
This close reading and interpretation of the Early Modern concept

of beneficium and maleficium explores the conflation of midwives
and witches as it pertains to twenty-first century images in the
PBS production of Macbeth. An exegesis of Rupert Goold’s 2010
film Macbeth starring Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood is
at the centre of this analysis. Ultimately, Goold uses the image
of the witch in the film to draw a close and historically accurate
connection to midwives. More to the point, the image of the
nurse as an expression of the seventeenth century midwife would
have colored a seventeenth century audience's understanding of
the witches’ prophecy because of Macduff’s close affiliation with
midwives – he was ‘untimely ripped’ from his mother’s womb.
An historical appreciation of the role of midwives is aided by
recognizing that midwives were almost exclusively present during
live births involving Caesarean sections in the Early Modern
period. Shakespeare’s audience would have inherently understood
this stark connection between the midwife and witch (as has been
noted in recent scholarship). Goold’s twenty-first century use of
the nurse/midwife image, then, reasserts a historical subtext that
further complicates the problematic nature of Macbeth. If Macduff
is associated with the witches as Goold suggests, should an
audience be satisfied with Macbeth’s fall at the hands of Macduff?
Most audiences feel a sense of relief once the tyrant Macbeth is
retired, but that emotional reaction might be misplaced. The
question is a pivotal one that strikes at the heart of this problem
play, though there are, of course, many unresolved problems and
conflicts in Macbeth. This interpretation simply introduces one
more complexity to consider.
S. A. Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 29 (2019): 52–87

Beehler/ Macbeth 53
S ometimes the genesis of historical movements can be distilled

into a few powerful words from a seminal text. ‘Thou shalt
not suffer a witch to live’ (Exodus 22: 18) states the King James
Bible, or, perhaps closer to the source, ‘maleficios non patieris vivere’
(Exodus 22: 18) from the Biblia Sacra Vulgata. These four Latin words
lay at the heart of an institutional movement against all manner of
women who suffered the fate of being identified as witches, and the
words could not have been far from the mind of the German Catholic
clergyman Heinrich Kramer, when he penned the 1487 publication
Malleus Malificarum.1 This text from the early modern period gave
rise to a powerful, charged, and highly visible articulation of several
treatises that equated the midwife to a witch. Even though many of
the early modern records that speak to the trials and proceedings
surrounding witches and witchcraft are incomplete or simply missing,
historians still broadly recognize that at least a thousand hangings of
witches took place in England and, on continental Europe, perhaps as
many as 100,000 witches were burned at the stake. Exactly how many
midwives among these women were delivered to this fate is unclear,
but what is clear is that Kramer’s text allowed for little ambiguity in
naming midwives as witches when he titled chapter eleven in part
one: ‘Quod obstetrices maleficae conceptus in vtere diuersis modis
interimunt, aborsum procurant, et vbi hoc non faciunt, Dæmonibus
natos infantes offerunt.’ The title of the chapter translated into English
is startling because it tethers witches to midwives directly: ‘Because the
witches who are midwives, of remote ways take away out of the midst
the pregnancies in the uterus, and when they do not do this, they offer
the live little children to devils.’ The most important words in this title
for the purpose of my argument are obstetrices and maleficae. Cassel’s
Latin Dictionary unambiguously translates the word obstetrices to the
English word ‘midwives’. Maleficae is a more complicated word and
has a number of nuanced translations, but the one word that gained
traction from the inception of the Malleus Malificarum in the early
modern period (and is noted in the Oxford Latin Dictionary) is ‘witches’.
Kramer’s authoritative text was consulted throughout the fervour of
the witchcraft trials and definitively established that midwives should
not simply be looked upon with suspicion but should actively face the
1
Heinrich [Kramer] Institoris and Jakob Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum (1487; rpt
Nuremberg: Antony Koberger, 1494, etc.).
54 S. A. Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
serious charges and penalties of witchcraft whenever appropriate.

While the very title of chapter eleven in part one of the Malleus
Malificarum is jarring, the more provocative and deliberate connection
forged between witches and midwives is made in the actual text:sed
ex hoc quòd maiora damna in his omnibus obstetrices Maleficæ procurant,
prout Maleficæ poenitentes nobis et alijs, sæpius retulerunt, dicentes:
Nemo fidei Catholicæ amplius nocet, quae obstetrices. Vbi enim pueros nõ
interimut, tunc quasi aliquid acturæ foris extra cameram infantes deferunt,
et sursum in aëre eleuãtes, Dæmonibus offerunt.2
A few key words and phrases in this longer excerpt from the Malleus
Malificarum are especially poignant. That Kramer uses the nominative
case for obstetrices Maleficae is significant because the translation
provides ‘midwives – witches’ as the subject of the clause. Midwives,
then, are equated to witches, and both terms are given equal weight
in the clause because of the application of the nominative case for
both words. On a linguistic and cultural level, then, each term is
synonymous with the other. In the Malleus Malificarum, ‘witch’
literally equals ‘midwife’. A most direct and powerful charge is then
levelled specifically at midwives, obstetrices, with the line ‘Nemo fidei
Catholicae amplius nocet’ (‘No one does more harm to the Catholic
faith’). A clearer attack on midwives, and the subsequent claim that
midwives are witches, could not be asserted more powerfully or
directly. Keeping in mind that the Malleus Malificarum was a pervasive
text during the early modern period and arguably the authoritative
text when investigating charges of witchcraft, one can reasonably infer
that early modern spectators in Shakespeare’s audience would have
been at least tangentially aware of the intense association between
midwives and witches.
Perhaps, then, one should not be surprised when critics like Kristen
J. Sollee continue to comment on this historically defined aspect of the
midwife: ‘Because they dealt with the mysterious, liminal space between
birth and death, sickness and health – and specialized in the needs of
women – midwives were viewed as suspect not only by the church
2
‘But besides this the midwives who are witches cause even greater damage, as
repentant witches have often reported to us and to others, saying: “No-one does more
harm to the Catholic faith than witches.” For when they do not destroy the children,
then as an alternative they carry the babies out of the room, and lifting them up into
the air, offer them to demons.’
Beehler/ Macbeth 55
and state, but also by patients and their families.’3 Recently, as Sollee
concedes, some scholars have suggested that the characterizations in
the Malleus Malificarum were not broadly circulated among the lower
classes in England because the text had recognition only among the
educated in the circles of law and medicine. Still, the punishment for
witchcraft could carry the very public and dramatic death penalty of
hanging in England and burning in continental Europe. In light of the
public and very gruesome nature of the executions, even an illiterate
population had to exercise a degree of awareness and caution when
interacting with anyone who had uncommon knowledge, as was the
clear case with midwives. These women, of course, often specialized
in medicinal services for women, services that included abortions and
birth control. They traded in the currency of forbidden reproductive
knowledge.
Several sources within literary criticism further establish, fairly
clearly, the close affiliation between witches and midwives during the
early modern period, but no such association has been recognized
in scholarship between the twenty-first century incarnation of the
midwife, specifically the appropriated image of the twentieth-century
nurse, and the witches in Rupert Goold’s Macbeth. While absent in
current criticism, such a consideration and close reading of Goold’s
film adaptation Macbeth can potentially help illuminate the position
of the weird sisters in the text as well as the film. This article, then, is
an attempt to address the absence in criticism by investigating Goold’s
significant decision to cast the witches as twentieth century nurses,
thereby re-introducing an established historical relationship shared
between practitioners of medicine and witchcraft.
Witches, of course, were frequently associated with the medical
profession in early modern England. Caroline Bicks, for example,
succinctly notes this connection when she observes that the ‘Acte
concernynge phisycyons and surgions’ (1512) ‘addressed the concerns
of two major groups: church authorities who feared that midwives
would use witchcraft and incantations while delivering newborns;
and a growing male medical establishment invested in regulating
its membership’.4 Religious authorities were concerned enough
3
Witches Sluts Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive (Berkeley, CA: ThreeL Media /
Stone Bridge Press, 2017), pp. 39–40.
4
Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), p. 12.
about the close affiliation between witches and midwives to initiate

legislation designed to address this concern, and that legislation can
best be described as commonplace.5 Not all critics, of course, are in
agreement. Laura Shamas notes that there is a ‘tremendous variance in
the trio’s dramatic representations [that] began around Shakespeare’s
death in 1616’ (2) rather than a clear and singular association between
the witch and midwife. In her studies of archetypes and Macbeth,
Shamas only tangentially mentions how Hecate may have been
affiliated with midwives.6 While only suggested in passing, the point
is an important one that helps establish a deeper understanding of
the role played by the witch in the early modern theatre. Barbara
Ehrenreich and Deirdre English’s Witches, Midwives, and Nurses:
A History of Women Healers perhaps presents a more substantive,
and sometimes contested, argument than either Bicks or Shamas by
exploring the powerful and cultural conflation that occurred between
witches and midwives. Eclipsing all of these scholars, however, are
Deborah Willis’s Malevolent Nurture: Witch Hunting and Maternal
Power in Early Modern England and Thomas Forbes’s The Midwife and
the Witch. Both of these texts culturally align the sixteenth-century
midwife conclusively with the witch.
Some recent critics have argued that this seemingly close alliance
between the midwife and the witch – specifically the arguments put
forth by Margaret Murray, Deirdre English, Barbara Ehrenreich,
and Thomas Forbes – should be consigned to the dustbins of the
discredited. Chief among these critics is David Harley, who even
goes so far as to suggest that ‘Undergraduate textbooks on witchcraft
cite Forbes or Ehrenreich and English while thoughtlessly repeating
outmoded prejudices about the murderous character of early modern
midwifery’.7 Harley suggests that the association between midwives
5
Caroline Bicks devotes a full chapter, ‘Stealing the Seal: Baptizing Women and the
Mark of Kingship’, to ‘the contentious discourses of baptism by women and acts of
witchcraft at the time of the play’s (Macbeth) production’. Bicks is not the only scholar
who considers the concept of the witch-midwife, but she is representative of some of
the recent insight that has been dedicated to the witch-midwife.
6
‘We Three’: The Mythology of Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters (New York: Peter Lang,
2007), pp. 2, 55–56.
7
‘Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife-witch’, in Brian P. Levack
(ed.), New Perspectives of Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology (London: Routledge,
2001), 49–74 (p. 68).
Beehler/ Macbeth 57
and witches during the early modern period has been overstated, and
a correction is overdue. Even if this point is broadly conceded, which
it is not, one is still compelled in the interest of good scholarship to
acknowledge clear and unassailable historical facts. First, midwives
were frequently tried and executed in a very public manner on the
charge of witchcraft during the early modern period as noted in
Sigmund Riezler’s surveys.8 Second, major and influential texts
like Sprenger and Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum (1487) as well as
Johannes Nider’s Formicarius (circa 1473) unambiguously tether the
midwife to the witch.9 Third, official court reports penned no later
than 1579 noted ‘panels of women searchers whose function it was
to investigate the bodies of accused female witches for the witch’s or
Devil’s mark’ were constituted ‘from the ranks of ‘honest matrons’,
‘women of credit’ or midwives’.10 It stands to reason that such practices
had to have been occurring on a less formal and unrecorded basis
well before 1579, so the practice of attaching midwives directly or
indirectly to the early modern witch was fairly common even if large
numbers of midwives were not directly prosecuted and executed as
witches, as has been contended by Harley. To suggest that the lower
classes in seventeenth century England would be blissfully unaware
of any connection between midwives and witches as Harley intimates
seems unlikely, even unfathomable. The extensive and pervasive
documentation that draws some association between midwives and
witches is simply incontestable even if the exact relationship between
the two groups remains in contention and under scrutiny.
All of these authors who address the midwife-witch, while making
important scholarly contributions in their own right and challenging a
number of assertions, consider and situate to varying degrees the wise
women and cunning folk within the early modern period without fully
recognizing A.R. Braunmuller’s key argument that reflects upon the
8
Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in Bayern im Lichte der allgemeinen Entwicklung
(Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1896), pp. 145, 166.
9
Incipit prologus Formicarij iuxta edic[i]onem fratris Joh[ann]is Nyder sacre theologie
p[ro]fessoris eximij : qui vitam tempore concilij consta[n]ciens[is] basiliensisq[ue] duxit
in humanis felicit[er] (Cologne: Ulrich Zel, 1473).
10
C. R. Unsworth, ‘Witchcraft Beliefs and Criminal Procedure in Early Modern
England’, in Levack (ed.), New Perspectives of Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology,
1-28 (p. 22). [Please correct page range here and in bibliography – this page range
refers to Harley it seems.]
relationship between the witches and a post modern audience: ‘As the
sisters have lost their unthreatening operatic and comic qualities, they
have resumed imaginative powers more akin to what they might have
held for an early modern audience’.11 Indeed, twenty-first-century
audiences, at least through Goold’s live action theatrical performance
and his eventual film adaptation, are enjoying a return to the early
modern conception of the witch that Braunmuller comments upon,
and this return is grounded in its deep and traditional connection
between the witch and the midwife, an image that can be seamlessly
interchangeable with the specific, and perhaps more easily accessible,
twentieth-century traditional figure of the nurse.
Beyond the immediate discussion of the witch in academic circles,
as has been noted in part in this brief survey of criticism, the image of
the witch, for general public consumption, has enjoyed a resurgence
in popular culture. One need not look any farther than J.K. Rowling
and the Harry Potter series to confirm such an observation on an
international stage. Time magazine reported as of May of 2013 that
500 million copies of the series had been sold, possibly making it the
greatest commercial success in the history of book sales. Some may
argue that Rowland’s work is not principally about witches, but it is
helpful to remember that the protagonists all attend ‘Hogwarts School
of Witchcraft and Wizardry’ (emphasis mine). All of this is to say that
witches today are culturally present, recognized, and in vogue. This
example of the witch in popular culture, while the most visible, is by
no means an isolated one. American Horror Story dedicates not one
but two seasons to the witch: ‘Roanoke’ in 2016 and ‘Coven’ in 2013–
2014. Likewise, video games as a genre have also seen the rise of the
witch. Town of Salem, originally released by Blank Media Games at
the end of 2014, has enjoyed a strong following. Goold seems to be
unique in re-introducing this historical connection between the witch
and the midwife. Another recent film adaptation of the play directed
by Justin Kurzel and starring Michael Fassbender, released in 2015,
associates the witches with a child and infant but never makes an
overt connection to midwives and childbirth. The current fascination
of witches, and specifically the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth,
continues to capture twenty-first century imaginations, and one
11
‘Introduction’, Macbeth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1–93 (p.
22).
Beehler/ Macbeth 59
need only consider the dozens of productions that were performed

in 2017 and 2018 that foreground the role of the witch. A number of
productions, like the San Jose Youth Shakespeare’s ‘Nine Witches of
Macbeth’, underscore in particularly dramatic fashion the sustained
intrigue surrounding the witches.
Much of the argument presented in this article, from the
perspective of history and Shakespeare’s text, is considered in my
companion piece ‘Macduff ’s Amorphous Identity: Equivocation and
Uncertainty as Defining Markers in Shakespeare’s Macbeth’ in which
it is argued that ‘Macduff ’s mother and that fictional history [of the
witches’ possible interaction as midwives in the birthing chamber
of Macduff] remain an enigma. So too are the witches shrouded in
mystery. As a result, we do not know who Macduff is.’12 Both there
and not there, the witch assumes an elusive role that stubbornly resists
definition and articulation, but understanding the witches and the
history of the witches on an individual and societal level is critical
to understanding the uttered prophecies. Debapriya Sarkar notes as
much in the following passage:
The different temporal and genealogical concentrations
of the two prophecies [relating to the hailing of Macbeth
and Banquo] create tensions between multiple possibilities
and singular certainty and shape Macbeth’s and Banquo’s
responses. The prophecies directed to Banquo are futuristic,
while the witches’ predictions for Macbeth are limited to and
realized in moments of presentness.13
Sarkar, and a number of other scholars, correctly consider the
temporal aspects of the play as they relate to the prophecies and
identity; however, one of the most crucial variables is only tangentially
considered in the argument: the past. Macbeth intuitively knows that a
temporal context is essential to understanding the witches’ utterances,
and he presses the witches for context: ‘Say from whence / You owe
this strange intelligence’ (1.3.75-76). The history of the witches and
their possible, even likely, identity as midwives reaches out to a time
12
Paul Beehler, ‘Macduff ’s Amorphous Identity: Equivocation and Uncertainty as
Defining Markers in Shakespeare’s Macbeth’, Revista Alicanto 2 (2009): 36–50 (p. 49).
13
‘ “To crown my thoughts with act”: Prophecy and Prescription in Macbeth’, in Ann
Thompson (ed.), Macbeth: The State of Play (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 83–106 (p.
90).
before the tragedy begins and raises questions about how audiences
should interpret Macduff ’s actions. Of course, no answer to Macbeth’s
question is forthcoming, so identity and context remain as elusive as
it is critical to interpretation.
This image of the midwife/nurse/witch embodies an ambiguity
that represents the core attributes of Rupert Goold’s PBS adaptation.
The figures remain true to Shakespeare’s equivocal qualities of the
play, emphasizing and re-emphasizing that the witches have created
a place of equivocation wherein what is foul is fair and what is fair
is foul. Throughout the film, the witches gingerly dance between the
identities of real world nurses and supernatural agents in a manner that
underscores the historic position of nurses during the early modern
period. This is the very spirit of ambiguity Shakespeare establishes
in Macbeth through the image and function of the witch.14 Rebecca
Lemon provides a potent insight into this very nature of the witches
when she notes that ‘the immaterial categories of truth and falsity lose
their definition: the witches’ speeches defy such rigid characterization,
hovering between accurate prophecy and alluring deceit’ (103).15 This
resistance to definition affects the interpretation of every facet of the
witch in Macbeth and reflects the dualistic and vulnerable role of a
marginalized, historical witch uncomfortably positioned between
healer and weird sister.
Macbeth, notably a play that elevates the presence of the witch
figure, is imbued with and perhaps even defined by questions.16 Even
14
Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny Causality (New
York: Methuen, 1987), is very direct in observing how even the basic aspects of the
witches in terms of gender are blurred. Ambiguity at the level of gender interpretation
can be extended to many aspects of the witches including their position in early
modern society and their function in the play.
15
Treason by Words (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 103.
16
While many critics have considered Macbeth to be a problem play for many reasons,
some of the more recent criticism considers the problems of politics, performance,
structure, and religion. Interested scholars might consider some recent work on
Macbeth and the multitude of problems, many of them unresolved, in the tragedy:
Beatrice Batson (ed.) Shakespeare’s Christianity: The Protestant and Catholic Poetics of
Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006), Donald
Hedrick and Bryan Reynolds (eds), Shakespeare without Class: Misappropriations of
Cultural Capital (New York: Palgrave, 2000), and Jan H. Bliss, The Insufficiency of
Virtue: Macbeth and the Natural Order (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996).
Beehler/ Macbeth 61
the opening lines of Shakespeare’s tragedy begin with questions:

‘When shall we three meet again? / In thunder, lightening, or in rain?’
(1.1.1–2). These questions, so carefully attached to the witches, yield
to other, perhaps more pressing questions critics have had little choice
but to consider as the play advances. What is the nature of the witches?
Do they have supernatural powers? Are they merely marginalized
women, as is the traditional historical conception of the widow or
unmarried woman? The first scene, through rhetoric and image,
ultimately gives rise to the fundamental ambiguity that is a defining
quality of the tragedy. With little delay, it is the equivocal witch that
speaks through an ambiguity that reflects her vital role: ‘Fair is foul,
and foul is fair, / Hover through the fog and filthy air’ (1.1.11–12).
This double image that rests on the use of parallel structure conveys
the generally opaque quality of the play that impedes clarity and vision
throughout the drama as repeatedly manifested in the witches and
their cryptic prophecies. Macbeth, of course, later suffers from this lack
of transparency when he utters the line ‘If chance will have me king,
why, / chance may crown me / Without my stir.’ (1.3.143–144). In this
moment, the protagonist himself points out that he should not have
to invoke agency if in fact fate in its unequivocal and unyielding state
is omnipotent, for fate determines outcomes without compromise, yet
the would-be king still remains unsure of the path before him, so in
the full course of time, he does ultimately and ruefully choose to act.
This kind of apparent progression that takes place in fits and starts
becomes fertile ground for the lack of transparency that overcomes
and defines the text.
Shakespeare reinforces and then broadens the general and defining
concept of dissonant ambiguity, the tension between what should be
and what actually is, in the Second Scene of Act One with the image
of the messenger. Duncan asks, ‘What bloody man is that?’ At this
point, basic identities are again in question, and these identities are of
no small consequence considering what is at stake: key information
on a hotly contested battlefield. Uncertainty is compounded in the
second scene with lines that yield a description of an image impossible
to discern: ‘Doubtful it stood, / As two spent swimmers that do cling
together / And choke their art’ (1.2.10–12). As was the case earlier
with Macbeth’s uncertainty about how to act, doubt remains a defining
quality in the play’s action and thought. Shakespeare presents the
image of two inseparable swimmers that cling to each other, and the
.individual identities are effaced in the moment. Shakespeare’s image

and language present questions that do not readily provide answers.
Context is key: the battle itself involves civil war, a conflict that blurs
lines between families and friends. Into this significant confusion
that hinges on doubleness and becomes a foundational aspect of the
drama, Shakespeare considers yet another concept of deception and
ambiguity: the role of a traitor.
All of these images speak to the general quality of ambiguity and
doubleness that ground the play, but civil wars are a particularly
powerful image because they involve armies and supporters who share
a common background and so cling together in a violent struggle.
Traitors involved in such conflicts become even more entangled
in the ambiguous, so Shakespeare’s reliance on such a figure in the
reported speech becomes an excellent vehicle to communicate, as
fully as possible, the thoroughly inherent and ambiguous nature that
permeates all spaces of the play, but most especially (as I argue here)
the witches. Not only the king but also the audience must ask who
supports King Duncan. Who sides with the rebellion? It is precisely
into this space that Shakespeare then forges his protagonist Macbeth,
who expressly voices his concern about being dressed in borrowed
robes, introducing yet another powerful image of deceit and ambiguity.
All of these images and the use of double language mentioned briefly
here are found in just the first two scenes; however, they are, as such,
representative of the fundamental problems and questions that course
through the tragedy.
Macbeth eschews clarity and transparency to embrace questions,
even in the opening line. In this world inhabit the witches, the
primary focus of this article, who become just one more extension and
exploration of the ambiguity that manifests itself in Goold’s adaptation
of Shakespeare’s text. They may, however, be the most influential
extension of ambiguity as audiences attempt to interpret actions
and assign motives. Are the witches agents of stability? Instability?
Good? Evil? With whom are they aligned? Goold capitalizes on the
overarching aspect of ambiguity when he places emphasis on the
question of the witches and their specific association with Macduff by
casting them in the distinguishing garb of twentieth-century nurses.
This visual medium of the nurse/witch introduces an intimate
relationship between Macduff and the witches, suggesting a possible,
but not verified, role of Macduff as an intermediary for the witches.
Beehler/ Macbeth 63
Macbeth’s ersatz ally performs an extraordinary action in Act Five in

that, in a rare moment devoid of ambiguity, he delivers the decisive
and violent blow to Macbeth. To understand the identity of Macduff,
then, is arguably integral to understanding the denouement of the
tragedy itself, but the drama, steeped as it is in ambiguity, resists a clear
recognition of Macduff ’s identity or what his actions actually signify.
Unsurprisingly, more questions about Macduff ’s identity linger. Does
Macduff act to create a more stable society? Does Macduff confront
tyranny? Is Macduff an instrument of the witches? Of tyranny itself?
On the other hand, should Macbeth be read as aligned with the
witches and even an instrument of them? One might be tempted to
answer ‘yes’ to some or even all of these questions, but the character
Macduff and his intimate connection to the witches’ prophecy raises,
inevitably, the disruptive element of ambiguity that stubbornly resists
yielding a clear interpretation. A simple ‘yes’ to these questions, it
seems, eludes the audience to some extent.
Understanding the witches is a prerequisite to understanding
Macduff and all of his actions. Women, at least in England, accused of
witchcraft in the early modern period were often thought to employ
the aid of familiars, like cats or other animals. In essence, the witch was
believed to be able to wield influence over other creatures. This quality
of the early modern witch is particularly interesting when the potential
proximity between Macduff, Shakespeare’s putative stabilizing force,
and the witches is considered. The weird sisters – again, because of
their historical and cultural position in the profession of medicine –
may wield influence over Macduff just as witches wielded influence
over familiars because of the nebulous circumstances surrounding
Macduff ’s birth. The opaque circumstances surrounding Macduff ’s
birth, a caesarian section, dramatically underscore the required
presence of medical personnel like midwives and barbers within the
birthing chamber. Macduff, like other familiars, is possibly placed
in the witches’ presence at a very intimate moment, his birth. After
all, Shakespeare does not introduce any other possible midwives into
the text that could potentially and directly be situated in Macduff ’s
sphere. Is such a connection directly stated? No. That being said, an
early modern audience would still likely entertain the question of
Macduff ’s birth and the role of the witches as midwives during that
moment because Shakespeare, through the invocation of the prophecy
– ‘All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter’ (1.3.50) – places such
weight on the role of the witches and, by proximity of action and deed,
the role of Macduff.17
Many of these issues of identity and witchcraft subtly but pervasively
permeate much of PBS’s 2010 production of Macbeth starring Sir
Patrick Stewart, so a close reading of the film can help unearth how
the witches operate.18 Director Rupert Goold demonstrates a keen
sensitivity to the witches and their role in his PBS production in
part because he begins the film not with the traditional scene of the
witches contemplating their plans but with a series of images that lead
to King Duncan’s inquiry, ‘What bloody man is that?’ (1.2.1). This
displacement of lines and action forces the audience to consider even
further Goold’s decisions regarding the witches and their vaguely
defined presence in the adaptation. Critics like Jonathan Ivy Kidd
acknowledge the powerful opening sequence and the seminal role
of the witches, but these same critics tend to overlook Braunmuller’s
observations about important questions surrounding identity and
the significant relationship between midwives and witches. Kidd
specifically states that the production of ‘Macbeth opened within the
confines of a dingy white-tiled hospital operating room that could just
as easily be the electroshock chamber in an insane asylum. The Three
Witches, posing as nurses, offer a tantalizing entrance into this revival
of betrayal, murder, and desire.’19 Kidd does articulate a rudimentary
association between the witches and nurses, and he is absolutely
correct that the entrance of the trio is tantalizing, but it is so for many
17
This article is a companion piece to ‘Macduff ’s Amorphous Identity: Equivocation
and Uncertainty as Defining Markers in Shakespeare’s Macbeth’ (2009), an essay that
examines and questions Macduff ’s role in Macbeth. The argument therein suggests a
possible connection between the witches and Macduff in Shakespeare’s text. Rupert
Goold’s adaptation, as I suggest and explore here, seems to make manifest that
interpretation, to some extent, through the powerful visual image of a witch that is
appropriately conflated with a twentieth century image of a western nurse.
18
Rupert Goold’s production of Macbeth has a rich history that ‘originated at the
Chichester Festival Theatre in England before appearing before appearing at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music and moving to Broadway in 2008’ (Shattuck C.9).
Eventually, the production was memorialized in the PBS filmic version that was
released in 2010. While all of the productions appear to be fairly consistent and
similar in their aesthetic presentation, this essay focuses exclusively on the images
captured in the 2010 PBS production.
19
‘Performance Review of Macbeth’, Theatre Journal 60.4 (December 2008): 664–65
(p. 664).
Beehler/ Macbeth 65
more reasons than merely introducing a ‘revival of betrayal, murder,

and desire’. To this point, Kidd falls short relative to the insight A.R.
Braunmuller lends. The point is not likely to be overstated: the intrigue
that swirls around the witches involves inherent questions about
identity and function that speak directly to, and indeed emphasize,
the elements that situate Macbeth so completely in ambiguity.
Other critics, like David Belcher, recognize the essential role of the
hybridized nurse/witch in the production, but the historic connection
still remains largely unappreciated. Belcher points out that ‘Macbeth
both fears and trusts these prophetic nurses; what they say “cannot
be ill, cannot be good”. As these three go from nurturing to nasty
in three brutal hours, it grows clear why director Rupert Goold
has appropriated nursing’s trustworthy image for his witches: for
Shakespeare’s murderous king, the lines between good and evil have
become hopelessly blurred.’20 Indeed, the lines of good and evil are
blurred – a point that is echoed in the work of Rebecca Lemon and
Arthur F. Kinney when they consider different aspects of equivocation.
Goold’s use of the nurse, however, is not as Belcher suggests, a singular
and unequivocal appropriation of ‘nursing’s trustworthy image’. Quite
to the contrary, the appropriation of the twentieth century nurse, as
noted earlier, is a powerfully direct association with the early modern
midwife. Belcher’s reading, while convenient from a twenty-first
century perspective, may be historically myopic and dismissive by
discounting and even contradicting the early modern position of the
witch in society and the role the witch assumes in Goold’s adaptation.21
20
‘Macbeth’s Witches Recast as Nurses’, American Journal of Nursing 108.5 (May
2008): 24.
21
Macbeth is a play that, because of the consistently resonant ambiguity, resists any
singular interpretation; in all of this, though, the witch remains a central part to
understanding the play and is prominent in many, perhaps most, productions. Arthur
F. Kinney directly comments on the phenomenon of the witch and its relationship to
Michel Foucault’s ideas about competing narratives as they relate to the body, or in
the case I posit here, the witch’s body: ‘Each playgoer attends the same performance
of the same play, and each has sensible, accurate, but quite divergent views of what is
being shown onstage, drawing on different if simultaneous cultural forces and ideas.
Sensory data are ordered and colored by the imposition of additional attitudes and
data (from Scripture, court practices, Holinshed) to isolate different kinds of signals
and different neurological processes, registering quite different thoughts, answering
differing needs, and charging images with differing meanings that render any single
meaning of the play – and even any single dominant meaning of the play – untenable’:
The 2010 film is quick to equate the witches with the ambiguity that
critics have commented upon. For example, even before the first line of
Goold’s production is delivered, a series of introductory images, some
of which Kidd notes, quickly dart over the screen.22 All of the images
are brief, perhaps less than a second in duration. Interspersed between
these rapid images is a unifying shot of a patient being transported
through a chaotic corridor. These establishing shots, while ephemeral,
are nevertheless essential because the audience is introduced even in
the opening second of the film to what will ultimately be the ubiquitous
image of the nurse and the close relationship that exists between early
modern witches and an incipient medical field as signified by Goold’s
nurses.
The PBS production begins with a main title screen that reads
‘Macbeth’. During the first few moments of the main title, disembodied
light footfalls with accompanying echoes can be detected. The cadence
of the walking is brisk and, much like a conductor sub-vocally counting
out a rhythm before an orchestra springs to life, the pulse of the steps
acts like a metronome to introduce the varied, but often fast paced,
theme music for the film. One can quickly surmise that the beats
of the footfalls belong to one of three disruptive nurses who deliver
the lines reserved for the witches in Shakespeare’s text. This detail is
important because it underscores the fundamental importance of the
witches’ roles prior to the film’s commencement. The actual sound
Lies Like Truth: Shakespeare, Macbeth, and the Cultural Moment (Detroit, MI: Wayne
State University Press, 2001), pp. 28–29. According to Kinney (and notably consistent
with Stanley Fish), the witch in the play signifies different ideas to different people,
and the presence of the witch dramatically touches upon any interpretation of the
play. After all, a witch begins all action of the play with not a statement but a question:
‘When shall we three meet again?’ (I.1.1), and it is the concept of uncertainty intimated
through the prism of the witch that helps inform an understanding of the tragedy.
22
Stuart Hampton-Reeves astutely points out that ‘the witches were there. They were
not obvious at first in the frantic bustle of the opening, but Duncan signaled that the
Captain should be left alone now that he had got crucial intelligence from him, and
everyone left the stage except three nurses’: ‘Shakespeare in Performance and Film’,
in The Shakespeare Handbook, ed. Andrew Hiscock and Stephen Longstaffe (New
York: Continuum, 2009), 112–28 (p. 125). Hampton-Reeves suggests that ‘these were
effective ways to disorientate an audience over-familiar with the play’, but such a
conclusion may be premature. An audience familiar with the role of the midwife and
its conflation with the figure of a witch would likely appreciate Goold’s choices and
even praise his historic consideration.
Beehler/ Macbeth 67
of the physical footfalls provides a regularly clear and unmistakable

musical anchor in the form of percussion that guides and directs the
very music of the film. In this opening moment of the film, then,
the witch conflates and figuratively assumes the roles of musical
conductor and film director in the same moment, cueing the film and
subsequent action; likewise, she is the creature that introduces life in
the film and, as the audience quickly witnesses, takes life away with
the assistance of her sisters. All of this is to suggest that, in Goold’s
production, the witch is affiliated with actual supernatural qualities
and, more directly, the medical profession. Even while Goold elects
to displace Shakespeare’s lines from Act One, Scene One, he still opts
to generate an omni-present aura about the witches that breaks the
fourth wall of film. The directorial decisions mirror the questions
that speak to the witches’ powers and medical identities in the actual
text of the play.23 The presence of the disembodied footfalls is an
important decision that suggests the necessary and ethereal role the
witches adopt in the film. That which unifies the sundry, chaotic clips
of different places and points of battle is the grimy corridor which
houses the nurses. Goold’s directorial decisions place an emphasis on
the question of influence. As Goold continues his exploration of this
aspect of the witches, the film delves into how the roles of the witches
are representative of a multitude of equivocal and ambiguous aspects
of the drama.
One critic, Stuart Hampton-Reeves, considers this opening
sequence and comments how J.R. Brown ‘rightly argues that
Shakespeare’s texts are and have always been “open” to alternative
ways of the part performed and the audience’s understanding of the
play as a whole’.24 Such seems to be the case in the 2010 film version
23
Some film critics have commented on the opening sequence. Stuart Hampton-
Reeves, for example, notes that ‘The permanent set suggested a wretched hospital
basement, a morgue perhaps, a torture chamber maybe’. More to the point, however,
‘In a keynote opening, the set took on the role of a wartime emergency hospital a
role it never quite lost’ (‘Shakespeare in Performance and Film’, 124). The witches as
midwives are considered natural denizens to this medical world, one that is steeped
in ‘grimy, institutional sterility’ (Ben Brantley in the New York Times, 15 February
2008) and holds ‘out the possibility of cleanliness, of redemption, but the possibility
would, of course, turn out to be an empty one’ (Hampton-Reeves, ‘Shakespeare in
Performance and Film’, 124).
24
‘Shakespeare in Performance and Film’, 117.
of Macbeth with regard to this scene and the accompanying footfalls.

As alluded to earlier, Goold places the supernatural witches and
their connection to the medical world in the consciousness of the
audience before even the theme music is introduced. The witches,
then, are associated with a supernatural existence that initiates and
encompasses the film while simultaneously being affiliated with a
medical profession that is inextricably woven into Macduff ’s origin
and identity. This connection, then, suggests that the witches at
least have the supernatural ability and access through the medical
community, like midwives of the early modern period, to influence if
not shape Macduff ’s fate.
Another example of the complicated identity of the witch in
Rupert Goold’s adaptation of Macbeth occurs shortly after the ghostly
footfalls. Goold focuses the camera on a bloody and dirty hand that
hangs slightly to the right of center in the frame. The hand itself is
muted by minor and very limited grasping motions, a directorial
choice that enables the brisk activity of a leg enshrined in a long,
drab skirt in the background to compete for and possibly capture the
audience’s attention. Unfocused and located to the left-hand corner of
the screen, the leg of the witch is marginalized in the frame, yet it still,
because of the physically frantic ambulatory motion and matching
musical tempo to the footfalls, continues its attempts to captivate
the viewer’s attention as assert a presence. Sound and sight work in
concert to direct and manipulate the filmic space. The established
role of the nurse/witch is one of control that, as has been suggested
Beehler/ Macbeth 69
earlier, is omnipresent and seems to blur lines by stretching beyond

the bounds of the natural world and even the perceived filmic world.
Remaining faithful to the equivocal aspect of Shakespeare’s
harmful witch and healing midwife,25 Goold’s nurses busy themselves
around the wounded captain, well within earshot of the conversation
and military reports that describe Macbeth’s valiant feats. During
this frenetic moment, the hands of the nurses appear to be
hopelessly entangled in the captain’s body as King Duncan praises
Macbeth’s performance on the battlefield. Again, Goold provides
an interpretation of the witches that emphasizes both at once a
ubiquitous and ethereal quality. These witches seem to be privy to all
of the sensitive communication among Duncan and his train. This
particular scene is a series of medium shots with the nurses in almost
every frame. Sometimes the nurse is positioned between the captain
and Duncan while at other times it is the captain who stands between
Duncan and the nurse. On more than one occasion, a nurse is looking
directly at the camera where Duncan is positioned while the wounded
captain relays presumably sensitive reports from the battlefield. The
nurses are literally and figuratively in the middle of the conversation,
yet they remain curiously unacknowledged when Duncan expresses
his optimism for and enthusiastic assessment of Macbeth with the line
‘O valiant cousin, worthy gentleman!’ (1.2.24).
Also of particular note in this close reading is the moment that
the nurses are directly addressed. In the exchange, a distinct distrust
is subtly communicated and is evident when Paul Shelley, who plays
Duncan, faces the witches and broadly gestures in a sweeping motion
to wave off the nurses.
25
Equivocation is, of course, embedded in the text and has been noted by numerous
critics. Shakespeare’s attention to equivocation, for example, is at one point directly
presented by the porter and his monologue the need to ‘equivocate’ in the third scene
of Act Two. Arthur Kinney is quick to note that the porter’s ‘matter of equivocation
condemns the Protestant cultural practice of an inner conversation with God, thereby
undermining much of the cultural moment’s religious language’ (Lies Like Truth,
242). The greater and more overt expression of equivocation throughout the tragedy,
however, rests in the prophecies that the witches produce. Here we see the dramatic
and devastating effects of equivocation in practice, and the acts of equivocation
directly result in Macbeth’s demise. The witches, then, put into practice much of what
the porter theorizes about.
This king does not want the nurses as midwives to attend his fallen
soldier. In the same moment, with the camera behind Duncan so as to
establish the king’s perspective in the film, Shelley delivers the line ‘Go
get him surgeons’ (1.2.44). A clear pause occurs between the word ‘Go’
and the phrase ‘get him surgeons’, so the combined line and gesture
suggests that Duncan, expressing suspicion about the witches, wants
the female midwives replaced with male surgeons. Once again, the
film calls into sharp focus the historic role of the midwives in Macbeth
and their specific influence over Macduff because of the questionable
circumstances around Macduff ’s highly touted birth and the needling
prophecy that ‘none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth’ (4.1.80–
81). The pregnant pause in the film at this sensitive moment serves
a second function: a subtle appreciation and further recollection of
history by recalling the sixteenth century socio-economic battle that
raged between midwives and surgeons over jurisdiction and duties, a
struggle that ultimately resulted in the empowerment of male barbers.
Goold’s decision again encourages the audience to consider history
and the circumstances surrounding Macduff ’s birthing chamber.
Male barbers and surgeons were often present in the birthing chamber
but were far less likely to incur heavy fines or face down accusations
of witchcraft, unlike their female counterparts, the midwives. This
gendered historical sense of distrust assigned to midwives, then, is
creatively and prominently established in Goold’s 2010 film adaptation
of Macbeth. Other questions spawn from this focus and distrust that
further intensify the central tenet of ambiguity affiliated with the
Beehler/ Macbeth 71
identities of the witches and, by association, Macduff ’s role. All of

the questions have the cumulative effect of training the audience’s
attention on Macduff and the circumstances surrounding his birth.
A continued close reading of Goold’s adaptation raises even more
questions about the role of the witches and the scope of their powers.
The witches are not directly in the frame when Duncan delivers the
line ‘Go pronounce his present death / And with his former title greet
Macbeth’ (1.2.65–66), but Duncan distinctly looks to his right while
uttering the command and gazes down a long, poorly lit corridor. The
moment is framed in a medium shot so as to provide a perspective
of the physical space and the many hidden areas within that space.
Anyone could surreptitiously occupy almost any space in the poorly
lit hallway. To punctuate this quality of the tenebrous space, the
Thane of Ross, played by Tim Treloar, scurries down the darkened
corridor after Duncan’s lines are enunciated and quickly disappears.
Shelley looks towards Treloar just before the thane departs and, as if
calling after Ross, states ‘What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won’
(1.2.68). In almost this same moment, one of the nurses emerges from
the dark corridor and walks briskly past Duncan and his entourage
as though on a very specific and focused mission. The ambiguous
nature of the midwife remains consistent, and the audience does not
know whether or not the nurse strategically overheard the critical line
because the lighting conveniently obscures any person who might be
in the corridor. The hidden spaces in the film preserve the mystery
of the witches and their roles in the adaptation. Are these natural
creatures with access to sensitive information, or do the witches
actually command supernatural powers and exert influence over the
tumultuous world around them? The answers, of course, consistently
remain shrouded in mystery.
The general scene is one of feverish action that introduces a
number of uncontrolled variables, the witches among them. Notably,
Hampton-Reeves is impressed that the scene is one ‘full of energy and
desperate panic’.26 Anything is possible in these opening moments,
and the frantic multifarious action cannot be fully absorbed by
the audience. The witches’ location and activities, as a result, are
liberated through the chaos that pulses around them. The nurse who
shuffles in and out of the scene, then, could very well have been in
26
‘Shakespeare in Performance and Film’, 124.
close physical proximity to the full discussion regarding Macbeth’s

elevation; on the other hand, the nurse may have been far removed.
Goold’s creative decisions, which faithfully reflect the basic nature and
role of the witches, simply do not permit any room for a conclusive
determination and again banish the audience to a position of doubt
because of the timing involved with the scene and the physical space
dedicated to the set. The camera does, however, provide at least one
moment of absolute clarity when a close up of Malcolm, played by
Scott Handy, introduces an expression of anxiety (as signified by a
prominently furrowed brow) upon seeing the witch emerge from the
shadows, positioned in close physical proximity to the conversation
steeped in politically sensitive information. Malcolm’s unblinking
eyes and slightly open mouth suggest a look of concern, even dismay,
and a sense of impotence about the communication that just took
place in an unsecured area; further, Handy turns his head just in time
to watch one of the nurses pass behind him from shadow to shadow.
A second nurse is then seen in the medium shot moving from the left
part of the frame, advancing towards the camera and past a stunned
Malcolm. The witches, because of their affiliation with medicine, have
access to all parts of the bunker and are seemingly everywhere. Just as
the medical credentials provide the nurses with access to the covert
knowledge of battlefield reports, so too would the medical credentials
and mysterious knowledge of historic midwives have provided
access to the birthing chamber of Macduff. The PBS film continually
Beehler/ Macbeth 73
reinforces the powerful relationship shared between the nurse and the
witch, constantly underscoring the significance of what conversations
and events the nurses had access to because of their profession.
Equivocation and ubiquity are blended to raise the very questions that
swirl around the identity of the nurses/witches and their powers, and
these questions are the same focal points of curiosity that arise with
the place of the witch in Shakespeare’s play. Historically, these same
questions of identity and social position would be defining markers of
sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century midwives. Goold encourages
his audience, as would likely be the case with Shakespeare’s audience,
to consider how these weird sisters may or may not be affiliated with
witchcraft and access to the supernatural.
The second nurse who then brushes past Duncan as he articulates
how to reward Macbeth casually carries a surgeon’s saw (though the
image could also easily be identified as a utilitarian hacksaw) in her
left hand, another signifier of the medical field.
The image of the saw is repeated throughout the adaptation
as is evident when the witches are placed in Macbeth’s kitchen
surrounded by knives and cleavers. Once again, remaining true to
the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century tradition of the midwife,
the image of a nurse is fused to the role of the witch. To lend greater
weight to this connection, the camera cuts to a close up of a pair
of hands that are wiping a provocatively large knife. This image of
a knife-wielding nurse appears throughout the film and in different
contexts. The inherent relationship between the image of the knife
and the witch is especially provocative because ‘Macduff was from
his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped’ (5.8.14–15). In other words,
postmodern audiences would be inclined to recognize that Macduff
was the recipient of a caesarian section, a commonplace term. Perhaps
keeping the etymological roots of the word ‘caesarian’ in mind can be
particularly helpful when considering all that takes place in the text
and the film. The word ‘Caesar’, derived from caesum or caedo in Latin,
enjoys a primary definition of ‘to cut’.27 The massive knife that the
nurse slowly and meticulously cleans is clearly used for cutting, hence,
27
Indeed, Caesar himself was thought to be the recipient of a Caesarian section and
became, in fact, a basis for the etymological origin of a Caesarian section. I merely
point out the history of the term here and do not suggest that most postmodern
audiences would necessarily be aware of this particular history.
perhaps at some subconscious level, Goold in his twenty-first-century

interpretation forges a connection, albeit remote and etymological in
nature, with the twenty-first century audience between the nurse and
the action of a caesarian section because of the visual act of cutting in
relation to medical personnel. Again, the powerful and visual semiotic
connection between the witch and the nurse is forged.
The shot is a lengthy one, and the hands belong to a woman
apparently dressed in a nurse’s garb – the white smock and drab skirt
with a covering for the hair is identical to the clothing the witches
wear in the first scene. Only slowly is the identity of the witch-midwife
revealed, forcing the audience to think through the process of images
much as one might attempt to unearth an answer to a mystery. In
some ways, this process itself is a cutting away of the extraneous in
an attempt to expose an essential kernel. Several images and several
seconds are devoted to the action of cleaning the knife, so this
presentation, on one hand, could not be deemed subtle – Goold
prominently and unapologetically displays the image; on the other
hand, though, subtlety is present in the scene and lies within the
deep semiotic relationship between the knife, the medical profession,
the prophecy involving Macduff being ‘untimely ripped’, and the
medical procedure of caesarian sections. Here we find a nexus: the
direction of the film mirrors the concept of equivocation in that the
images are both painfully visible and invisible at the same moment.
The forbidding knife, which certainly could be a means to violence,
serves as a signifier of the healing medical profession and is wielded
by the third witch whom Goold introduced earlier in the film. This
moment is a seminal one in the adaptation, for Goold forges a lasting
connection through the series of images that affixes the medical
profession of the nurses to the roles of witches and, ultimately, the
violence and chaos that can be unleashed based on this relationship.
Martin Turner, who plays Banquo in the PBS adaptation, further
establishes the significance of an affiliation between the witches and
the medical establishment when he delivers the line ‘You should be
women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are
so’ (1.3.45–47). Turner pauses after the word ‘your’ in order to place
his fingers to his chin as a means of recognizing the surgical masks
that the nurses don. The word ‘beards’ is then uttered at the same
moment that Turner tugs at an imaginary surgical mask. This gesture
suggests that another signifier of the medical profession, the surgical
Beehler/ Macbeth 75
mask, is that which impedes Banquo from identifying the creatures

as women. Both the gesture and distinction are important because
the creative decision suggests that the witches’ primary identity, at
least in this one seminal moment, is not based on some perceived
supernatural feature like a ‘choppy finger’, ‘skinny lips’, or even ‘beard’
in a conventional sense. Instead, the women’s source of power and
ability to wreak mischief again originates from their association with
nursing or, from a sixteenth-century perspective, midwifery. If, by
extension, midwives in general cannot or should not be interpreted
as traditional women because of their specialized medical knowledge,
then are these creatures to be regarded with suspicion? They do,
after all, violate some fundamental boundaries as they pertain to
traditionally established gender roles.
If women threaten the male-dominated establishment in medicine
(both in the early modern period and Goold’s film), they might also
threaten other spheres of masculine dominance like government and
martial institutions. So much attention towards the end of the text
is lavished upon the prophecy of Macduff and the circumstances
surrounding his birth. The witch/midwife seems to control and direct
the energy around the prophecy in the text as well as Goold’s adaptation.
Macduff obviously endured a traumatic birth, so, historically, either
surgeons (that is, barbers) or midwives would have been present
during the creation of Macduff. Again, fundamental questions without
clear answers never seem far from either Shakespeare’s text or Goold’s
film. Who, exactly, was in the birthing chamber? Why are the witches
so entangled in Macduff ’s fate? True to the spirit of equivocation,
Shakespeare and Goold provide no answers, and the questions never
yield any definitive sense of clarity.
Sustained close readings of both the text and film reveal even more
questions that speak to the disruptive role women adopt in Macbeth.
For example, the potent exchange of dialogue that occurs in the
third scene of Act One between the witches, Banquo, and Macbeth
takes place in the literal shadow of a prop the witches constructed
in Goold’s film. The disturbing image includes a sports-coat, pair of
glasses, surgical bag that appears to house a pint of blood, and, most
importantly, a heart which the witches seemed to have removed
from the captain who delivered the report of Macbeth to Duncan
in the opening scene of the film. This gruesome talisman is present
throughout many of the shots that give rise to the lines from Scene
Three of Act One. Of particular note, though, is Ross’s line ‘He bade
me, from him, call thee Thane of Cawdor, / In which addition, hail,
most worthy thane, / For it is thine’ (1.3.105–07). Goold’s adaptation
remains true to the text, and the lines themselves again remind the
audience of the witches’ perceived role of witch-midwife. For example,
the following exchange between Macbeth and Banquo is delivered
without alteration in the slightest:
Macbeth: Your children shall be kings.

Banquo: You shall be king.
Macbeth: And Thane of Cawdor too. Went it not so?
Banquo: To th’ selfsame tune and words. Who’s here?
(1.3.86–88)
The dialogue, as it is written and delivered, forcefully reminds the

audience about the witches and their presence in the play, but the
extent of the witches’ power is never conclusively revealed. Goold, at
the end of the scene, again carefully preserves the text that recalls the
position of the witches when Macbeth speaks to Banquo in an aside
with the lines ‘Think upon what hath chanced, and at more time, /
The interim having weighed it, let us speak / Our free hearts each to
other’ (1.3.153–55). The director chooses to maintain, faithfully, that
dialogue which secures the role of the witch during the moment of
Macbeth’s elevation to Thane of Cawdor. Shakespeare’s language
assures a prominent position for the witch during this critical moment,
and Goold shapes the dialogue with the image of the talisman, an
image that is derived from the witches’ roles in the opening scenes
as medical midwives. Goold, as he had earlier in the adaptation,
forcefully and unequivocally pairs the identity of the witch with the
identity of the midwife through the shared presence of the talisman
whose heart is literally the remnant of a medical procedure the witches
supervised and conducted. To some extent, one could argue that the
image and action suggest that women can wield tremendous power
and present formidable threats to a male-oriented hegemony when
women assume some semblance of social authority, regardless of how
marginalized that authority may be. On the other hand, perhaps the
witches are simply marginalized women, as Deborah Willis points
out, who only have the power to curse. Goold’s King Duncan seems to
privilege the possibility of potent women, supernatural or otherwise,
when he waves off the witches in favor of male surgeons. If women
Beehler/ Macbeth 77
are not contained in Macbeth’s society, then their subversive activities

have the potential to unsheathe remarkable disruption even in a world
men control and dominate.
Knives, and sometimes the conspicuous absence of knives, continue
to shape the expressed narrative in Goold’s adaptation. Lady Macbeth’s
famous call to ‘you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts’ (1.5.39–40)
is a direct request to those supernatural creatures that are affiliated
with death. Specifically, Lady Macbeth calls out to ‘you murth’ring
ministers’ (1.5.47), a name in such a context that helps recount the
Malleus Malificarum and the murdering instincts of abortion and
sacrifice that witches were accused of harbouring. Shakespeare, in this
moment, invokes the imagery of childbirth through Lady Macbeth’s
request to ‘Come to my woman’s breasts, / And take my milk for
gall, you murth’ring ministers’ (1.5.46–47). Breastmilk, of course,
is intimately associated with childbirth, wet nurses, and the events
that follow birth, all of which are intricately woven into the fabric of
midwives. The image of the knife appears three lines later with the line
‘That my keen knife see not the wound it makes’ (1.5.52). Interestingly
enough, Goold has no visual of a knife at this point, suggesting that
Lady Macbeth, unlike Macduff, is not an extension of the witches even
in the moments where the most powerful witch-like language and
supernatural invocation is uttered. Lady Macbeth desperately presses
her case with the spirits to ‘unsex me here’ (1.5.46), perhaps in an
attempt to escape her ordinary and powerless existence of a woman by
joining the ranks of the witches, who resist circumscription and social
containment through the traditional signifiers of gender by relying on
‘beards’. Such a plea on Lady Macbeth’s part is futile. She and Macbeth
will ultimately be exorcised by the witches’ agent Macduff rather than
perform the actions of the witches. As such, the visual of the knife, a
signifier of agency relative to the witches’ prophecy, remains absent in
Goold’s adaptation and, sadly, beyond Lady Macbeth’s grasp.
Goold again relies on another key omission of the image of a knife
in Act Two. Shakespeare’s most infamous dagger is enshrined in the
lines ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward
my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: / I have thee not, and yet I see
thee still.’ (2.1.33–35). Here, not only is a physical knife missing, but
Patrick Stewart amplifies the potent absence of this knife through
several quick lunges into the air, lunges that are accompanied by a
‘whooshing’ sound that punctuates the emptiness of the air. To
be certain, Goold establishes early in the adaptation that he has

no compunction about translating possible hallucinations in the
tragedy into visible images. Such is the case with the bloody image
of Banquo’s ghost, an image that is physically represented in the film
and one that no other character other than Macbeth acknowledges.
Certainly, other adaptations of Macbeth have relied on the physical
use of a knife during this monologue. Trevor Nunn’s 1978 Macbeth
with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench, for example, relies on the prop
of a knife. Likewise, Roman Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth with Jon Finch
and Francesca Annis prominently displays a dagger. Even more
recent adaptations like Justin Kurzel’s 2015 Macbeth (starring Michael
Fassbender and Marion Cotillard) or the 2016 Daniel Mays Macbeth
both prominently display a visible dagger. In fact, a quick review of
twentieth- and twenty-first-century YouTube clips of the dagger scene
reveals that far more often than not, a physical dagger is used. Goold’s
deliberate decision to omit a physical dagger, like the omission of a
knife with Lady Macbeth’s ‘unsex me here’ speech, signals that the
murderous couple are not extensions of the witches unlike the imagery
attached to Macduff.
Indeed, the image of the knife and its association with the prophetic
witches becomes very forceful in the penultimate scene, perhaps the
most crucial moment that helps illuminate the prophecy as it entails
Macduff and his role. In Scene Seven of Act Five, Goold begins to
underscore the intimate relationship Macduff shares with the witch/
midwife when Shakespeare’s line ‘either thou, Macbeth, / Or else my
sword with an unbattered edge / I sheathe again undeeded’ (5.7.18–
20) is altered to ‘thou, Macbeth, / Or else my blade with an unbattered
edge / I sheath again undeeded’ (emphasis mine). At the moment
Macduff begins to utter Goold’s altered line, he puts aside a rifle to pull
out a dagger. Macduff is visually associated not with a ‘sword’, which
is a specific instrument of warfare, but a ‘blade’.28 As I have argued
here, an early modern audience would have intuitively understood
28
Certainly, Goold could have opted to present the traditional image of a sword
fight rather than a fight with daggers, and there is clear precedence for such an
interpretation. The 1971 Roman Polanski Macbeth has a three minute and fifty-
six second sword fight, of which fifteen seconds are given to Macbeth brandishing
a dagger. The 1978 Ian McKellen and Judi Dench Macbeth limit the scene wholly
to a sword fight. Most productions rely exclusively on a sword fight, so the Goold
production is extraordinary in its use of knives.
Beehler/ Macbeth 79
the powerful connection between Macduff and the witches, but this
recognition may have been lost over the centuries. Goold bridges the
historical divide and returns to the early modern interpretation by
altering the word ‘sword’ and providing a visual of a knife to shepherd
the postmodern audience back to Macduff ’s role as an extension of the
witch/midwives. Shakespeare, and Goold’s adaptation, underscores
the illusion that Macbeth is the ‘tyrant’ (5.7.14) when, in fact, the text
and historical position of midwives suggest Macduff is indeed doing
the bidding of the disruptive witches. Even the names Macbeth and
Macduff are so close in approximation – both beginning with ‘Mac’,
both consisting of seven letters, and both comprising two syllables – as
to suggest that they and their roles in the tragedy might be confused,
misinterpreted, or interchanged. Such confusion might have been
more easily recognized in the early productions of Macbeth.
Wasting no opportunity to foreground Macduff ’s affiliation with

the witches, Goold cuts directly from Macduff to Scene Eight with
an inebriated Macbeth pouring over the tortured question ‘What was
he that was not of woman born?’ The line, of course, is not present
in Scene Eight of Shakespeare’s original text, so Goold again makes
artistic decisions that call the audience’s attention to the prophecy.
Immediately, Macduff enters with an automatic weapon that he fires,
and, after failing to strike down Macbeth, draws a dagger. Consistent
with Scene Seven, Goold replaces the word ‘sword’ with ‘blade’
throughout the scene, so instead of the line ‘I have no words, my

voice is in my sword’ (5.8.6–7), Macduff delivers the line ‘I have no
words, my voice is in my blade’. The image of the blade is associated
with a dagger, which returns the audience to the witches, which in
turn directs the audience to the nurses/midwives and reaffirms the
comprehensive control the witches asserted through the prophecy.
Macduff will not set free the time with the usurper’s cursed head
because Macduff and not Macbeth is the extension of the witches
and social disruption. Macduff ’s voice, action, and presence are all
represented in his ‘blade’. Again, Patrick Stewart says, and erroneously
believes, that it is his ‘keen blade’, or dagger/knife, and not his ‘keen
sword’ (5.8.10) that will offer protection. In fact, the use of the word
‘blade’ directly positions the dialogue and imagery potentially around
a medical instrument used in Macduff ’s birth. This event drives and
defines the action and resolution of the plot.
With a bright light that washes over Patrick Stewart’s head and
four other prominently placed lights that bathe his body in the
otherwise dimly lit room, Macbeth delivers the lines that signal his
full recognition of the witches (line seventeen was omitted from the
film):
Accursed be the tongue that tells me so,

And be these juggling fiends no more believ’d,
That palter with us in a double sense,
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope.
5.8.16–22
The battle that ensues then involves neither rifles, pistols, nor swords
though some of these instruments are employed with futility. Instead,
the melée is one that keenly relies upon knives. The witches, their
familiar (Macduff), and the signifier of the caesarian section (the
knife) fully monopolize the attention of the audience.
Finally, just as Patrick Stewart is about to deliver the coup de grace,
he pauses. The camera trains in on Patrick Stewart and then cuts to a
shot that closes in on the witches, all of whom stand before the camera
in full nurses’ garb that includes surgical masks. In the dark room,
the nurse/midwife/witch figures are placed in front of a light source
just as Macbeth is bathed in light. The final intersection between
Beehler/ Macbeth 81
the prophecy, Macbeth, and Macduff is made manifest and literally

illuminated. The scene then concludes with Macbeth’s final word of
acquiescence: ‘enough!’ – as if to suggest that the society has no option
but to capitulate, tragically, to the witches and the problematic action
of Macduff ’s victory.
Goold is fairly consistent in his treatment of the midwife/witch
throughout these scenes, but a close reading of one more scene can
be helpful in understanding how the witch powerfully intersects with
the midwife. Scene Six of Act One takes place in a kitchen, and Goold
provides a track back steady cam at the beginning of the scene as a
means of revealing, gradually, the full extent of action. As the camera
pulls back, a long table in the kitchen is revealed, and a number of
servants are using the table to prepare a meal. At first, a close-up
of the hands of two women savagely cutting into fish and animals
is presented. Next, a close-up of the hands of two men chopping
vegetables and pounding meat yield to a full shot of the men as they
fill the screen. Finally, Goold frames a full shot of a male and female
servant preparing food, working in tandem with each other across the
table. When the track back is complete, a female servant passes the
screen firmly grasping a meat cleaver, an instrument that helps the
audience recall the earlier scene of the witches with the knives. At this
point, the audience is gently guided to a recognition that the same
actresses who played the witches from earlier shots are now doubling
for the female servants in this shot from the kitchen. The signifier
which Goold uses to establish this connection as directly as possible
is the meat clever, and, later, a knife that is identical to the knives
featured earlier in the film.
Instruments used for cutting that had been earlier associated with
the medical profession of nurses now become the primary vehicle in a
different setting, the kitchen, for establishing the identity of the weird
sisters.29 That Goold chooses to use the image of the knife instead
29
The association between witches and cooks is a topic of considerable interest in
criticism, and much has been written about the cauldron and uses of recipes. Most
recently, Geraldo U. de Sousa has argued that ‘Cookery and witchcraft become
intimately intertwined. Outdoors, associated with the witches, and the indoors,
associated with the Macbeths, remain contiguous, invading and pervading each
other’s domain’: ‘Cookery and Witchcraft in Macbeth’, in Thompson (ed.), Macbeth:
The State of Play, 161–182 (p. 162). That Goold would seize upon this connection to
reintroduce the image of the knife is consistent with the treatment of the witch.
of other qualities associated with the actresses is, again, significant

because the medical image of the knife is, as was mentioned earlier,
very closely related to the procedure of a caesarian section. The tactic
is subtle, but effective. In the event that the connection is, perhaps, too
subtle for Goold’s audience, the director chooses to place one of the
witches just to the right of centre in the frame. Lady Macbeth is placed
in the centre, so the actions and gestures of the witch become more
overt in the scene. The fates of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and Macduff
all intersect in the midwife/witch’s edge of the knife.
A second female servant who was enthusiastically plucking the

feathers from a bird then crosses in front of the screen with a pair of
rabbits she prepares for the meal. The images of the female servant
are layered and threefold. First, she is seen frantically removing the
feathers from the poultry. Next, she uses a string or perhaps a cord
to tie together the rabbits. Finally, she wields a large knife to place a
methodical incision into the body of the rabbit. These three images,
when combined, suggest the concept of meticulous preparation and
procedure, not entirely unlike one that might be observed in a medical
setting. Certainly, some members of the audience would immediately
recognize the actresses doubling as female servants and witches,
but, for many, this instant identification may not be immediately
forthcoming. The repeated image of the knife and cleaver in close
association with the women, however, would telegraph the identity
of the women in a more direct manner. The final lingering shot of
Beehler/ Macbeth 83
the three women then entirely removes all doubt of their identities
even though they have filled non-speaking roles in this scene. All
other speaking roles and actors are purged from the lingering shot
to allow an extended and exclusive moment with the three women,
an intimate moment shared with the audience that is imbued with
ominous, discordant music.
The action of creating incisions in the rabbit is complete and
reminiscent of a medical operation, one like a caesarian section even.
The woman firmly grasps the highly visible knife and deliberately leans
over the rabbit. The incisions that are made do not suggest a frantic
slashing moment that lacks control; instead, the actions are delicate
and precise, even refined and elegant – certainly tightly executed.
While making a series of cuts into the meat, the witch bends over the
rabbit so as to have a clear line of sight and control over the operation.
This moment could easily be shot in an operating room even though
it is ostensibly presented in a kitchen. The overlay of images, again,
reinforces a close connection between the witches and the medical
profession (and so, likely, helps the audience to recall Macduff ’s
birthing chamber), and, in this case, the primary witch even appears
to be engaging in a complex culinary operation just as a caesarian
section is a delicate operation that involves cutting.
Ultimately, the many images of Goold’s Macbeth capture the
conflated image of the midwife/witch, an image that complicates an
interpretation of the play because Macduff ’s role in Macbeth’s demise
becomes tainted by the question of the witches, their identities,
and their actions. Shakespeare’s early modern audience, unlike a
postmodern audience, would have been predisposed to accept the
presence of a midwife/witch and appreciate the significance of its
potential presence at the moment Macduff was ‘Untimely ripped’ from
his mother’s womb. The Scottish Play underscores the ambiguous
presence of the midwife/witch, and the resulting tangential connection
between Macduff and the witches raises questions that resist definitive
interpretations of the weird sisters. Critics like Robert S. Miola yearn
for a ‘clear moral vision of remorse in the final meeting with Macduff ’,30
but this vision is impossible to achieve and impossible to defend in
criticism, especially when one considers that Raphael Holinshed’s
30
‘I Could Not Say “Amen”: Prayer and Providence in Macbeth’, in Shakespeare’s
Christianity, ed. Batson, 57–72 (p. 70).
Chronicles provided Shakespeare with a fairly clear account of the

monarch Macbeth who, after legally being elected King, presided
over ten years of peace in Scotland. In fact, one can argue that the
historical Macduff and not Macbeth in the Chronicles commits the act
of treason by disrupting society and civil harmony when he interfered
with the construction of the castle at Dunsinane. This account and
these events only further problematize the tragedy and the roles of the
witches. What may be unequivocally concluded in the midst of such
ambiguity is that the image of the midwife/witch should be given due
consideration throughout the tragedy because this creature presses
in on the roles Macbeth and, more importantly, Macduff assume in
both Shakespeare’s work and Goold’s adaptation. Indeed, the more
often Goold superimposes the semiotic image of the midwife/nurse
onto the witch, the more complicated and problematized the tragedy
becomes and the more Macduff ’s role in the tragedy assumes an
elevated and disruptive position rather than a heroic force that returns
the play to a position of social stability. All of this is to suggest that
the definitive moment of Macbeth’s demise at the hands of Macduff
is not a restoration of government but perhaps an uncertain and ill-
defined extension of the witches’ influence. Rupert Goold relies on the
witch/nurse/midwife to bridge a connection between his post modern
audience and the early modern audience as he time and time again
visually reinforces the conflation of witch/nurse/midwife, and this
historical conflation helps to expose the equivocal and double nature
of the full play, suggesting a heightened importance in Macduff ’s
actions.
That Macbeth is a tragedy is without contention. The multifaceted
complexities of Shakespeare’s play, though, complicate how critics
read the tragedy. Doubleness of language and illusion frustrate the
characters as the drama unfolds. Clarity in the prophecies is a quality
that remains stubbornly elusive and, as such, orchestrates the tragic
elements. Macbeth realizes, with horror, and far too late that ‘be these
juggling fiends no more believ’d, / That palter with us in a double
sense’ (5.8.19–20). Shakespeare, and Rupert Goold’s adaptation that
visually binds the witches to nurses, offers another aspect of tragedy
in Macbeth: unrecognized illusion. The doubleness of the roles of
the witches as nurses/midwives paired with the ambiguity of the
prophetic language they wield results in tragic consequences not just
for Macbeth, but also for an audience who is inclined to feel some
Beehler/ Macbeth 85
erroneous sense of relief that the tyrant Macbeth is vanquished at the

hands of Macduff, a possible familiar of the witches.
In some ways, Shakespeare and Goold’s interpretation complicate
the Aristotelean understanding of tragedy. In Poetics, Aristotle notes
that
Every tragedy falls into two parts – Complication and
Unraveling or Denouement. Incidents extraneous to the
action are frequently combined with a portion of the action
are frequently combined with a portion of the action proper,
to form the Complication; the rest is the Unraveling. By the
Complication I mean all that extends from the beginning of
the action to the part which marks the turning-point to good
or bad fortune. The Unraveling is that which extends from the
beginning of the change to the end.31
The witches are not extraneous to the action proper, but their histories
arguably are. Shakespeare complicates Aristotle’s genre of tragedy by
removing a clear turning point from good to bad fortune because
the function of Macbeth and Macduff are in doubt. The witches are
‘frequently combined with a portion of the action proper, to form the
Complication’, but the complication remains shrouded in ambiguity
because of the identity, history, and role of the midwife/nurse/witch.
Goold uses the medium of the film to re-introduce this complication
and does so through a dramatic reliance on a series of visual images.
Ultimately, the presence of the midwife/nurse/witch raises more
questions about when in Macbeth a turning point presents itself and
when the definitive Aristotelean tragic moment is revealed.
31
Aristotle, Poetics, Part XVIII, The Internet Classics Archive. 2009. Available URL:
http://Classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.2.2.html, accessed 27 March 2019.
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rpt Nuremberg: Antony Koberger, 1494, etc.
Nider, Johannes. Incipit prologus Formicarij iuxta edic[i]onem fratris Joh[ann]
is Nyder sacre theologie p[ro]fessoris eximij : qui vitam tempore concilij
consta[n]ciens[is] basiliensisq[ue] duxit in humanis felicit[er]. Cologne:
Ulrich Zel, 1473.
Riezler, Sigmund. Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in Bayern im Lichte der
allgemeinen Entwicklung. Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1896.
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974.
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Beatrice Batson, ed. Shakespeare’s Christianity: The Protestant and Catholic
Poetics of Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Waco, TX: Baylor University
Press, 2006.
Beehler, Paul. ‘Macduff ’s Amorphous Identity: Equivocation and Uncertainty
as Defining Markers in Shakespeare’s Macbeth’. Revista Alicanto 2 (2009):
36–50.
Belcher, David. ‘Macbeth’s Witches Recast as Nurses’. American Journal of
Nursing 108.5 (May 2008): 24.
Bicks, Caroline. Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England. Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2003.
Bliss, Jan H. The Insufficiency of Virtue: Macbeth and the Natural Order.
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.
Brantley, Ben. The New York Times. 15 February 2008.
Braunmuller, A.R. ‘Introduction’. Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1–93.
De Sousa, Geraldo U. ‘Cookery and Witchcraft in Macbeth’. In Thompson
(ed.), Macbeth: the State of Play, 161–182.
Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny
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Hedrick, Donald Keith and Bryan Reynolds, eds. Shakespeare without Class:
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Historical Nexus: Bewitching Nurses in Rupert

Goold’s Visual Medium of Macbeth

This close reading and interpretation of the Early Modern concept

S. A. Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 29 (2019): 52–87

S ometimes the genesis of historical movements can be distilled

serious charges and penalties of witchcraft whenever appropriate.

about the close affiliation between witches and midwives to initiate

need only consider the dozens of productions that were performed

the opening lines of Shakespeare’s tragedy begin with questions:

.individual identities are effaced in the moment. Shakespeare’s image

Macbeth’s ersatz ally performs an extraordinary action in Act Five in

more reasons than merely introducing a ‘revival of betrayal, murder,

of the physical footfalls provides a regularly clear and unmistakable

of Macbeth with regard to this scene and the accompanying footfalls.

earlier, is omnipresent and seems to blur lines by stretching beyond

identities of the witches and, by association, Macduff ’s role. All of

close physical proximity to the full discussion regarding Macbeth’s

perhaps at some subconscious level, Goold in his twenty-first-century

mask, is that which impedes Banquo from identifying the creatures

Macbeth: Your children shall be kings.

The dialogue, as it is written and delivered, forcefully reminds the

are not contained in Macbeth’s society, then their subversive activities

be certain, Goold establishes early in the adaptation that he has

Wasting no opportunity to foreground Macduff ’s affiliation with

throughout the scene, so instead of the line ‘I have no words, my

Accursed be the tongue that tells me so,

the prophecy, Macbeth, and Macduff is made manifest and literally

of other qualities associated with the actresses is, again, significant

A second female servant who was enthusiastically plucking the

Chronicles provided Shakespeare with a fairly clear account of the

erroneous sense of relief that the tyrant Macbeth is vanquished at the

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