Meet the Witches

While trolling the Web for  some ideas that include critical thinking, I came across this lesson, which I adapted from the Folger Shakespeare Library website.

Learning Targets
By the end of the period I will...

• formulate an answer to the following critical thinking question: If Shakespeared had used any one of the terms from Holinshed, what would we expect the woodcut to look like?

Agenda

1. Woodcut of witches
2. Holinshead witches in history
3. Read Act 1 Scenes 1 - 3 Macbeth
4. Macbeth's Witches

Success Criteria
Participation in the construction of T-chart contrasting the imagery of the witches and in answering the critical thinking question.

Materials Needed

• copies of Holinshead Macbeth (found on the web and on the Folgers site)
• overhead of woodcut of witches (found on Folgers site)
• copies of T-chart template

Lesson Plan
Place the overhead of Macbeth, Banquo and the 3 Witches from Raphael Holinshead's Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, London, 1577 (see Folgers site) on the board and ask students to brainstorm a list of adjectives to describe the witches in the woodcut. Compile a list of the adjectives on the board.

Distribute simplified copy of Macbeth from the Holinshead Chronicles (I used one from a writing in role assignment floating around my department entitled "Double, double, toil and trouble..." The only publication information I have on this is that it was copyrighted 1985 by Sundance Publishers and Distributers, Inc. It is from a blackline master from a separate collection of lesson plans). Read the story aloud to the class. Ask students to go back over the story and circle terms used to describe the witches in the passage. Compile this list in a T-chart on the board while encouraging students to copy the notes onto the template provided. Adjectives should include:

• uncouth wonder
• three women
• strange and wild apparel
• creatures of the elder world
• goddesses of destiny
• nymphs
• faeries

Read Act 1 Scenes 1 to 3 with students. I asked for student volunteers to read each part. At key points, I interrupted the reading to explain. Next, ask students to review Act 1 Scene 3 and make a list of terms used to describe the witches in the passage, encouraging students to copy the terms down on the T-chart template provided. Terms should include:

• so wither'd and so wild in their attire
• look not like the inhabitants o' the earth
• chappy fingers
• skinny lips
• bearded women

Show the students the woodcut picture of the three witches and ask students the following question: The woodcut is based on the descriptions in Shakespeare's version of Macbeth. If Shakespeare had used any one of the terms from Holinshed, what would we expect the woodcut to look like? Lead the students in the dicuscussion of this. The intersting point that came out of this conversation in my class was that Shakespeare describes the witches as old beggar women, which is the profile of those accused of being witches at that time. Holinshed portrays the witches as supernatural creatures, akin to faeries and nymphs and/or agents of the underworld. This lead to a discussion of who witches were in Shakespeare's time and the Inquisition and Salem witch trials.

The next day, to underscore our previous discussion, I brought in a handout (also un-cited but floating around my department) regarding Elizabethan Beliefs such as Religion, The Chain of Being, and Myths and Magic, which I read with the students. I showed them a picture of the Cottingley Fairies with an excerpt from Wikipedia explaining what they were and the social and media uproar they caused, in order to show students that, as recently as the 1980s, Francis Griffiths, one of the girls involved in the hoax, insisted one of the photographs was real. This discussion captivated my students and generated quite interesting discussion about religious beliefs, and social and religious mythology.

Works Cited
Cottingley Fairies. Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. 12 July 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_fairies>. 15 July 2011.

Gibson, Susan. "What are these...?" Folger Shakespeare Library. 2007. <http://www.folger.edu/eduLesPlanDtl.cfm?lpid=798>. 15 July 2011.