![]() ![]() Wyrd is "the lord of every man." The word is also a common noun each man has his own wyrd, or destiny. In Anglo-Saxon literature, "Wyrd" is the name of the personified goddess of fate. ![]() ![]() It was Theobold, the dearest foe of Pope, who saw that Shakespeare must have written weird, and that this rare word had been changed because of "the ignorance of the copyists." Modern editors accept the suggestion of Theobold but I believe that the full force of the word weird is often unapprehended, even by special students of the play. In that edition the word is weyword in the first three passages in the play, and weyard in the last three. Stranger still, _weird_ does not appear at all in the only authoritative text of the tragedy, that of the First Folio. 136), and once in the phrase "the weird women" (III. The word occurs six times in this play as usually printed: five times in the expression "weird sisters" (I. Strangely enough the word weird has come into modern English entirely from its use in Macbeth. New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1904. The following essay is reprinted from The Views About Hamlet and Other Essays. ![]()
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