Shakespeare's Macbeth, written at the time of a new sovereign, incorporates witchcraft at the very beginning of the play. Nowadays, of course, witchcraft is looked on as something faintly ridiculous, however, in Shakespeare's day, this was not the case, and many of the audience that first saw Macbeth, remembered the burning of 'witches', something that they had personally witnessed. An earlier play, 'Richard 111' saw a principal character, Richard, as a deformed, and depraved monster, who, by his own admission," to shrimp mine arm up,like a withered shrub, to make an envious mountain on my back, to shape my legs of an uneven size, to disproportion me in every way", All these physical deformities were supposed to be the Devil's work.
