The book asserts James’s full belief in magic and witchcraft, and aims to both prove the existence of such forces and to lay down what sort of trial and punishment these practices merit – in James’s view, death. Daemonologietakes the form of a dialogue (popular for didactic works) and is divided into three sections: the first on magic and necromancy (the prediction of the future by communicating with the dead), the second on witchcraft and sorcery and the third on spirits and spectres.

Many elements of the witchcraft scenes in Macbeth conform to James’s ideas and beliefs in witchcraft as expressed in Daemonologie, News from Scotlandand his anti-witchcraft legislation. This includes ideas such as the witches’ vanishing/invisible flight, their raising of storms, dancing and chanting, sexual acts, their gruesome potion ingredients and the presence of animal familiars. 

Scholars are divided as to whether Shakespeare’s portrayal of witchcraft panders to the King’s interests, or whether it is a more subversive comment on his involvement with witch-hunting, or perhaps a mix of the two. It seems noteworthy that although the play Macbeth is contaminated with the witchcraft of the ‘Weyward Sisters’, and Macbeth himself is spurred on by their prophecies and the urging of his somewhat witchy wife, Shakespeare places the responsibility for Duncan’s murder on Macbeth himself and Macbeth’s downfall is a result of his tyranny as King. His greatest error in his dealings with the witches seems to be his credulity and naivety with their double-speaking prophecies.