The Clash between the Utopian World of the Witches and the Dystopian Society of Humankind in “The Witch” and “Macbeth”

Abstract

Witchcraft has been present in cultural and intellectual history of various societies, and inescapably the representation of witchcraft and a witch figure have been one of the shared interests in numerous literary works. Particularly, witchcraft as a theme was very popular among the famous dramatists of the Renaissance period in England. For instance, both The Witch by Thomas Middleton and Macbeth by William Shakespeare have thick layer of witchcraft in their corpora. Accordingly, the present research is an attempt to highlight that, in contrast to the contemporary firm beliefs in and accusations against “witches,” these plays present the closed witch community as an almost a utopia through providing a stark contrast between the enigmatic yet egalitarian and free society of the witches and the hypocritical norms of the plays’ societies specifically related to sexuality and freedom of an individual.