Macbeth

What do you think?

I'm not saying you can't, but I wouldn't.

 The Witches are a dramatic device, they are very minor characters with no real personality who pop up (literally!) and offer the temptation of being king to Macbeth. Their function (apart from being entertaining and spooky) is to deliver a couple of mystic messages to Macbeth, that's pretty much it for them. They aren't developed. They have no character

 On the other hand, Lady Macbeth is a central character. She is very human and three dimensional. She is not a dramatic device. I don't think she is in the same category as the witches.  

I wouldn't advise it. The witches are an extremely enigmatic force in the play: they can certainly see into the future, and they seem to have evil intent (have a look at their revenge on the sailor's wife and their murder of the pilot as they report it in Act 1, Scene 3). Are they human? Are they spirits or ghosts? Do they just exist in Macbeth's head? You could read the evidence in the play to answer any of these questions 'yes' or 'no'.

Lady Macbeth is quite a different prospect. She's a real woman, married to Macbeth, who seems to have recently had a baby or a child die (she claims to have 'given suck', and she says that there is milk in her breasts - and yet Macduff says that Macbeth 'has no children'). And she has no evil powers at the start of the play: in fact, so nervous is she that she won't be strong enough to persuade Macbeth to kill Duncan that she has to ask the evil spirits to fill her up with cruelty:

Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty!

A woman who needs evil assistance in order to be cruel surely can't be a witch. And remember, Lady M. works by persuasion, where the witches work by prophecy. There's a big difference.

This is a good question for the discussion board.

I would not think of Lady Macbeth as the fourth witch. The role of the witches is to plant in Macbeth's mind the idea that he might someday be king. Lady Macbeth takes that idea and immediately starts to work planning how to make it happen. Without her influence, he might never have killed Duncan or committed any of the other offences in the play. Rather than placing her among the witches, you might say that she represents Macbeth's ambition.

 Read the contents Posted by robertwilliam.Great!

Liked the the interpretative autonomy of the crtic;in-depth answer which cleared a few doubts in the mind.

While the witches actually perform witchcraft, Lady Macbeth never takes the plunge and becomes a witch.  Even Macbeth is more witch-like with his willingness to participate in dark rituals involving a bubbling cauldron!

I don't think the witches are minor characters or unimportant to the story.  However, they are quite different from Lady Macbeth, who is definitely evil, but who doesn't sink to the depths of depravity that Macbeth does.

A great book is available that goes into this very subject in great detail - Witches and Jesuits - check the link for a great review of the book by Jamie Wheeler!

http://www.enotes.co m/blogs/book-blog/2008-07/witches-and-jesuits

I would not.  Instead, think of her as yet another very influential female in Macbeth's life...even though Macbeth isn't completely sure the witches are female (he comments on their beards), he is intrigued and influenced by their actions in the play.  By the same token, he is influenced by his wife's words and actions up until the point he begins acting alone to secure his throne by hiring murders to take care of the threat of Banquo and Fleance.