PROLOGUE OF EVIL

It is dark and stormy and ominous. Something is not right in the Elizabethan universe and the audience is about to be let in on it. Elizabethans really believed that witches were the Devil's servant. They believed they were ugly old and just bad news. So, Shakespeare hits his audience with a triple dose of witch in the first lines of the play, "When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?". They then go on to call all kinds of "evil" spirits (animal spirits) to help them out. All the while it is lightning and thunder. So, the mood of the first scene sets us up for things to come. . The darkness in the first scene slowly spreads across the entire play making the forbidden and the ominous very much the mood and texture of the play.