In Act I, Scene 3 of Macbeth, the witches meet to plot and cause mischief. The first witch asks the second "where hast thou been, sister?", to which the second replies "killing swine".

For some reason, this line has always grated on me - it seems so completely pointless and, as such, out of place in an otherwise tight and purposeful script. The other witches go on to describe their own dastardly deeds, but the witch who does nothing but kill swine remains strangely mute. No commentaries of the text (or, at least, commentaries that I have seen) have ever explained this line to me. I can only assume that killing swine was something terrible in Jacobean England, but has lost its significance today.

Which brings me to my point: is Shakespeare gradually slipping away from us? Is the author, long held to be the paragon of English literature, gradually losing his meaning and, therefore, his value? If so, does it matter? Who will replace him?

Just some light thoughts for a Thursday night, as I carefully avoid marking students' essays on Macbeth.

I attended a Marist Brothers school many years ago. Although I did "Julia Ceasar", My class touched on other Shakesperian plays. My recollection of this passage of "Macbeth" was compared with the Owellian novel "Animal Farm". The swine referance was a reference to the upper classes.

Otonoko....hmmmm "it's a marxist plot" :)

Who will replace Shaky ? *meeeee*

Jayb..I think ur on the money there. 0_^

I'm not sure Shakespeare has been particularly relevant to many people at all over the past few centuries- merely social contract that one must pretend Shakespeare is a pinnacle of our culture (along with Dickens and Plato) to appear part of society (and not get fail marks and scorn for blasphemy at pointing out contrary).

Otokonoko - Macbeth is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays. I once was in the audience for a wonderful rendition of it at the old quarry at West End in Townsville. Excellent night, wonderful ambiece - bagpipes on the slopes of Castle Hill and all :)

As far as "killing swine" goes, in Shakespeare's day witchcraft accusations were rife in England, and were often precipitated by such crises as the otherwise unexplained death of domestic pigs. In preindustrial England, pigs ("swine") were valuable household possessions, but they were vulnerable to any number of pathogens that were floating around in those days.

The phenomenon of witchcraft accusations in Europe (and indeed the colonies) is a fascinating phenomenon that has been well explored and documented. Interestingly, much the same beliefs and scapegoating occur throughout the developping world today. I've seen a supposed "witch" chased down the road in PNG, less than 20 years ago - she was held responsible for the unexplained death of some pigs belonging to someone from another subclan.

I think Marxist readings of Shakespeare tend to be revisionist, although they were popular in the 60s and 70s. Mind you, the anthropologist Marvin Harris published an excellent Marxist analysis of European witchcraft accusations in the 70s, entitled 'Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches'. It's been torn apart now, but it was a pretty neat analysis for its time.

As for those who dismiss Shakespeare's relevance today - clearly your education was lacking :)

Take the obvious meaning which is that a witch is an evil creature who in her spare time would be doing wrong things to people and property. This witch spent her free hours causing loss to honest people by causing disease or other harm to their valued animals, pigs.

The audience would recoil in horror and hiss at this awful apparition who was shown acting according to type.