Macbeth’s line, “You should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret, / That you are so” recurs in this print by Richard Newton, featuring the three witches, from 1799, as it had in the 1791 etching by James Gillray of the Weird Sisters, who are at once the witches from Macbeth  and contemporary statesmen.

Richard Newton, Macbeth (London, 1799).  From the collections of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

James Gillray, Weird-Sisters; Minister’s of Darkness; Minions of the Moon (London: Hanna Humphrey, 1791).  From the collections of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University