Lady Macbeth Revisited: A Modern Witch

Since frolicking in the memory of the despicable likes of Sycorax, a woman who represents the epitome of the basest form of womanhood, I cannot help but recall Kate Fleetwood’s depiction of Lady Macbeth in the PBS production.  If ever there was a representation of woman it is she:  Fleetwood’s Lady Macbeth was internally bloodless, her savageness shown in the image in which drenched with Duncan’s blood.     Both Sycorax and Lady Macbeth are brutal and power-hungry.  Lady Macbeth’s ambitious will to power is obvious, but in what way is Sycorax power-hunger, one might wonder?   Prospero references Sycorax’s “grand hests,” and “abhorred commands,”  of which Ariel refused and was imprisoned for having been disobedient.  This witch who could control “control the moon, make flows and ebbs,/And deal in her command without her power” (V.i.271-272).  Before she died, Sycorax managed to become the queen of her own island, exiled from the society that subjugated and demeaned her.  Not a bad plan, Sycorax.