Las brujas de Macbeth: ¿hermanas fatídicas o sirvientas del destino?

Abstract

In this article Shakespeare’s play is explored from the perspective of Macbeth’s relationship to the witches, not only in the gray zones between free will and determination but also in the no less porous borders between power and submission. Such insidious power relations are found to be reversible: whoever fashions him(her)self master (mistress) will be revealed as servant. Through a lexical, semantic, and etymological analysis of the word wierd, the hidden dimension of these reversible power relations is uncovered. In the final section of this article, and as an illustration of this game of power and submission, I have engaged in a brief description and analysis of Jesusa Rodríguez’ 2002production of Macbeth. In her adaptation, the servants-witches-shamans take up the alternate roles of servants to a Mexican bourgeois, middle-class family, and real witches-shamans resorting to ancient pre-hispanic traditions of witchcraft for their spells. In a very original manner, Jesusa incorporates other rythms, other worlds, other times, configuring a new form of magic, a new act of power: the potion is now concocted multilingually in Nahuatl, Spanish and English. At the end, in a creative act of betrayal/deformation, Jesusa transfers Malcom’s last triumphal cry—“The time is free”—to the witches-servants who, dressed in the humble attire of service and carrying their bundles of rags as if for a journey, declare the freedom of time and the world, thus implicitly confirming their power.