Which witch is which?

It is quite likely that the three Witches of M*****h (or three Weird – or Wyrd – sisters) were based on three demi-goddesses gifted with all-knowing powers (knowledge of past, present and future) and who are part of both Greek and Norse myth. In Greek myth they were the Fates and were called Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos; in Norse myth they were the Norns or Sisters of Wyrd and were called Urdhr, Verdandi and Skuld.

One of the Shakespeare’s sources may have been a story of noblemen who conspired with witches against King Duff but, by establishing that there are three of them, he taps into the associations of the above as well as all of the associations of the number three. At the temple of Apollo the Pythia sat on the god's tripod to deliver her oracular responses, the trident of Poseidon (the Minoan Poteidan whose name means ‘husband of the goddess Da-nu’ and whose worship reaches back to at least 7000 BC) was a magical weapon, and luck, especially bad luck, is said to come in threes.

According to legend, M*****h was first performed at Hampton Court in 1606 for King James I and his brother-in-law, King Christian IV of Denmark, and was clearly designed to appeal to King James. Was this performance Shakespeare’s attempt to cater (even pander) to a relatively new monarch with royal Scottish ancestry – Shakespeare re-wrote history in order to hide James’ ancestor, Banquo’s, role in the plot to assassinate King Duncan? Did he realise that King James had an antipathy towards witches? In 1604, Dr. John Dee had petitioned James for protection from accusations made against him. However, James was unsympathetic to anything linked with magic and witchcraft since he had participated in the 1590 trials of the North Berwick Witches saying that a coven of them had assembled to conjure up a storm to drown him and his new wife Anne of Denmark as they sailed up the Firth of Forth to Leith. In 1597 he published his famed and influential ‘Demonology’ that placed a curse on the next two centuries. (Although King James ceased believing in witchcraft later in his life, between 1590 to 1690 an estimated 3,400 people were burned as witches in Scotland). But James also had an especial dislike of political assassination, even of out-and-out tyrants such as the Roman emperor Nero and Nebuchadnezzar II.

M*****h combined his two major fears – treason and witchcraft. Yet, James did not ban it – although we have no evidence it was performed again until its brief revival in 1611 when Richard Burbage (c.1567-1619) played the title role at the Globe on 20 April, an event that Simon Forman recorded in his Book of Plaies. The next recorded performance was in 1663, by William Davenant's company, the Duke of York's Servants, at Lincoln Inn's Fields.
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