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Shakespeare's Women: the Weird Sisters

Watch the video to see a discussion surrounding a painting of Shakespeare's witches.

Sylvia Morris

This is part of our Shakespeare's Women series in partnership with the education team. On flickr, we have created a collection around these wonderful ladies.

Shakespeare's play Macbeth opens with the Weird Sisters, or the three witches, immediately bringing the supernatural world directly into its heart.  In the painting discussed in the video below, dating back to the late 1700s, Fuseli portrays them as barely human hags: evil and threatening.

Is this how you imagine the weird sisters to look? If you were directing the play would you make them look different?