mark of a witch's familiar. In the play, the First Weird Sister says, "And like a rat without a tail / I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do" (1.3.8-10). It was the job of the familiars to carry out tasks for the witches and help them in their daily chores.The Witches' familiars are named in the play. The First Weird Sister's familiar is called Grimalkin, and in Act 4, Scene 1, she makes it clear that Grimalkin is a cat, when she says, "Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd" (4.1.1). "The cat was said to be the form most commonly assumed by the familiar spirits of witches . . ." (Dyer and Oxon 30). The Second Sister has a toad for her familiar. It is named Paddock. The Third Sister's familiar is called Harpier, which suggests that her familiar is a raven because the Elizabethans often called a raven "a harpy, a food-snatcher" (Wills 82). The raven is also associated with Lady Macbeth. After hearing a raven outside of her castle, she says, "The raven himself is hoarse / That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan / Under my battlements" (1.5.39-41). Ravens were popular familiars for witches, at that point in history, because it was thought that they gathered body parts off of corpses and carried them back to witches for their spells and potions. Lady Macbeth is a woman that is independent and has a dominating personality. What Elizabethan men feared most were independent women. They were attracted to women that were quiet, passive, and did what they were told. A woman that was bold and headstrong was considered unfeminine. A characteristic of a witch was a woman that had unsexed herself, or someone that had taken from herself the traits that made her a woman. Lady Macbeth verbally unsexes herself when she says, Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me hereAnd fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood;Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,Come to my woman's breastAnd take my mi...
