The three sisters in Macbeth are some of the most timeless witches ever portrayed. Ghosts appear indirectly or indirectly in at least eight plays. Fairies abound in Midsummer, and references to them are sprinkled throughout other plays. A handful invoked ancient Roman deities, that sometimes appeared onstage directly. Prophetic visions and various other supernatural happenings frequently inform characters’ decisions.

Shakespeare obviously had a thing for the supernatural. But did he truly believe in it?

In the Elizabethan era, witch trials were still happening, and were grounded in law. Henry VIII and Elizabeth I both passed witchcraft laws, which attempted to control the narrative of the Reformation by asserting that the Anglican Church was ready to destroy the existential terror of the day. These laws, however, seem to be crafted around public opinion rather than genuine panic. The legal fight against witches really took off when James I took the throne. Years before becoming king, he wrote a book about witches called Daemonologie, which he used as evidence to support his witchcraft laws as soon as he became king in 1604. Though James I also used witchcraft to control the public through fear, his escalation of the issue suggests a genuine belief in witches. Thus, throughout Shakespeare’s lifetime, a number of witch trials happened in the country, pamphlets and books about witchcraft were common, and the belief was not limited to the uneducated lower classes.

The ghost question was debated frequently among Shakespeare’s contemporaries. In the Elizabethan view, the question was not “Do ghosts exist?” but, rather, “Are ghosts a genuine spirit of a person, or a trick of the Devil?” Hamlet asks himself similar questions about the ghost of his father, and seems to decide the spirit is genuine. Placing ghosts in dreams (Richard III), visions only visible to some (Macbeth), or other shadowy settings helped Shakespeare use ghosts while avoiding the technical questions of their authenticity.

The supernatural definitely made for convenient plot points, was emotionally powerful in the minds of audiences, and pandered to a superstitious royal family. Witch anxiety fanned by the royals flared during Shakespeare’s life. Though it is assumed he was a conforming Anglican, there is no way to discern Shakespeare’s true beliefs regarding witches. A firm divide between realistic and fantastical fiction had not yet been cultivated during his time, and to renounce the supernatural would have been an insult to the royal family. One has to accept that Shakespeare’s plays fed supernatural fanaticism at the time, whether as a choice of genuine belief or one of loyalty or writer’s block.