Note to Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3, line 32: "weird sisters"


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Macbeth,
Act 1, Scene 3, line 32.
Shakespeare probably picked up the phrase "weird sisters" from Holinshed, who writes, "the common opinion was, that these women were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say) the goddesses of destinie, or else some nymphs or feiries, indued with knowledge of prophesie by their necromanticall science." However, in the First Folio (1623), where Macbeth was first published, the word is printed as "weyward" or "weyard," as though it could mean "wayward" — wrongheaded, intractable, perverse.