How does shakespear use the witches in Macbeth?
… as Plato and Aristotle’s, where he used the ideas in another of his tragedies ‘Troilus and Cressida’ which concerns the Trojan war where Ulysses described the order of the universe as being like a “ladder”. Ulysses hinted at the chaos that results from disturbing the ‘natural’ order of things. This order of things is disturbed in Macbeth when Macbeth kills King Duncan. The ‘natural’ order of things includes the ‘great chain of being’ which is a metaphor for God who ranks everything in order of perfection with himself being first. In the 17th and 18th century the ‘great chain of being’ was taken very seriously. The king was considered high up in the rankings of perfection and so he was hypothetically God’s representative. The ‘great chain of being’ believes in the right order of things which is only disturbed by bad deeds, in this case, the killing of King Duncan. …
