Shakespeare’s sisters are elusive and equivocal. They are more like classical Fates than vernacular witches. The term “weird” at this time referred specifically to the Fates and the power of prophecy. In order to suggest something of this nature, and to avoid the modern vernacular associations of “weird,” our text adopts the Folio-based spelling “weyard,” suggesting “wayward, marginal.” The sisters are women on the edge: between society and wilderness, culture and nature, the realm of the body-politic and the mysteries of the hieratic.
