In Norse mythology the Fates, or Norns were three female weavers who controlled the destiny of men.
The whole idea of Wyrd Sisters refers to this I think - with our trio playing that role. This is not just a Shakespearean allusion. It's a very clever title by Terry.
I read that somewhere before. Well, that's one of the points I love in Terry. He's always doing those clever things you sometimes realize only later. I think someone called it fridge brilliance.
Three women personifying fate also appear in Greco-Roman mythology. The "Moirai" or "Parcae" are pretty much the same as the Wyrd sisters.
I like this book. You first see the three witches together, and you see Granny Weatherwax in more detail.
Although I read the Tiffany books before the straight Discworld books, so I'd kinda met her already.... On that, I really liked the Tiffany books. Am only a teen, so when I want something easier going but still Pratchett, they're the ones I go for!
im coming in quite late on this discussion but anyway,
i don't think its essential to know all of Shakespeare's plays before reading this book, in fact one of the things i like the most about the discworld books is how you can be reading something for the 5th time and realise something new. or have great long discussions about them like this
my fave part of the book is where the Fool organises a bowl of water to be present where he and Margrat were to watch the play 'in case she wants to wash her hair'
i don't think its essential to know all of Shakespeare's plays before reading this book, in fact one of the things i like the most about the discworld books is how you can be reading something for the 5th time and realise something new. or have great long discussions about them like this
I agree. To confess, I from all of Shakespeare's plays I only ever actually read MacBeth at school (and even this in a dumb-German-basic-English-class-pupils-are-to-stupid-to-understand-it-otherwise-simplified-version ), although of course I know about the one or the other content (Romeo and Juliet or "To be or not to be"... is there anybody out there who never had heard of?). On the other hand spotting the several MacBeth references has been enjoyable in itself.
And still are.
Now I have read the complete DW series a second time in the right order I again have begun to pick the highlights and just started with "Wyrd Sisters".
This book I already have read three or four times, but there, right on the second page I spotted two nice little foreshadowings which I never spotted before:
[Some descriptions of the Ramtops and Lancre, then:] Even the land, at times, seems alive ...
And:
[The gods] play games others than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings. It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end...
It was fascinating, well, you presumble hardly would spot it by first reading (except you indeed remember very good such little details of phrases), but I am lookind forward what I also still may have missed...
They, by the way, there is a question I always wondered about since I am noch familiar with a name beginning with "Hw":
How do you pronounce "Hwel"?
This name always puzzled me.
When I am reading there always forms somethin like "Hüwell", with a silent "ü"-sound (the sound Ankh-Morporkians skip from Überwald because of the silly dots, something similar-sounding as the "u" in "turn") turning up undeliberately between H and w to prevent my (imagined) tongue to choke itself.
But I always had the suspicion that this pronuncation might be far from its actual pronuncation, especially in a native English speaking tongue... Okay, presumbly Hüwell nevertheless would be jumping again up in my mind again and again while reading like a jack-in-the-box, but at least I would know how to pronounce it the right way.
Somewhere above there has been mentioned a connection between "Hwel" and "Will", therefore it would be something in the direction of "Well", "Will" or similar?
Hwell is a Welsh sounding name, that would either be pronounced Huwell or Howell. But as you say, it is also meant to be reminiscent of Will as in Shakespeare.
Ah, okay, thank you, then I haven't been too far away.
Although the connection between Hwell and Will (Shakespeare) I first spottet here at the forum where it is mentioned.
Until I saw Hwel in the animation series I imagined him another way, and even after this I had to be told (or I rather I read it somewhere), that he there has been modelled after Shakespeare (yes, I am rather ignorant on recognizing "stars" ), I only thought "Hu? That shall be a dwarf?". But I also read somewhere (on L-space presumbly) that Hwel should be a reference on Shakespeare himself and then actually (and at last, if really really late) saw the connection myself, very clear nowadays and I now wonder how I ever not could have spottet it immediately (or even think Hwel should look otherwise in the animation). So it "logically" took until reading this thread before also seeing a connection between both's names (okay, not knowing the correct pronuncation wasn't helpful either).
Hello everyone, I want to buy the English version of "Wyrd Sisters" for a friend and I'm trying to find out more about the differences between the different editions now. Is the US edition from Harper different from the UK versions (spelling changes and so on)? Are there any differences between the different Corgi editions? I'd like to give her a recent edition with British spelling. It would be cool if someone could help me. :dance:
Hello everyone, I want to buy the English version of "Wyrd Sisters" for a friend and I'm trying to find out more about the differences between the different editions now. Is the US edition from Harper different from the UK versions (spelling changes and so on)? Are there any differences between the different Corgi editions? I'd like to give her a recent edition with British spelling. It would be cool if someone could help me. :dance:
It's a good question, but I don't know of anyone who has ever read both copies and compared the two. I was once listening to an audio copy of Thud! (the US release) while reading the UK book. There were differences, but not really that many.
I think in some of the earlier books there may have been textual differences between the UK and US editions, but I think the more recent books are pretty much left as is. I remember reading a US version of one of the more recent books where the editor/cut and paster had screwed up a sentence from the UK version, leaving it totally nonsensical.
The main reason to get the Corgi edition (or just about any UK edition) is that the cover art is 100 times better than the cover art on most of the US books (especially the paperbacks). That's why I spent a small fortune importing all of the used Corgis from Britain.
The one exception (at least for me) is the cover art for the US version of Raising Steam, which although it's based on Kidby's cover art for the UK edition (which itself is essentially the same concept as Kidby's cover for Snuff) is a much better execution.
During my research I stumbled across an online preview of the American edition and I found out that they actually changed words like "colour" to "color". That's why I ended up buying this beautiful British harcdcover edition:
raisindot said:
The one exception (at least for me) is the cover art for the US version of Raising Steam, which although it's based on Kidby's cover art for the UK edition (which itself is essentially the same concept as Kidby's cover for Snuff) is a much better execution.
I agree. The British cover art is very dynamic, but especially from afar it just looks like a blur of colors. The US version is a lot more recognizable and atmospheric.
During my research I stumbled across an online preview of the American edition and I found out that they actually changed words like "colour" to "color".
Nowadays, I understand that they generally limit themselves to adjusting the spelling and the quotation marks. However, in 2000 they briefly tried publishing The Truth simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic. I bought both the UK and the US editions, and I compared them word by word. There were a truly astonishing number of differences. Most of the changes were the "I'm an editor so I have to change something to prove I'm not just a rubber stamp" sort, utterly nonsensical, but in some places paragraphs were shifted and rewritten. For the most part the information was the same, but in two places, what looked like tiny changes actually altered the character's reactions and reasons for doing things.
More recently I observed with relief that there were no substantive differences between the UK and US editions, so I stopped making the detailed comparisons.. I still try to get both versions, just in case. I also like to get a paperback copy because they are easier to handle, but I still see a dismaying number of typographical errors created in the transition to paperback.
Although I like a good cover picture (high praise to Paul Kidby), I don't worry about the covers because I will buy the book anyway, but I know that a good cover can draw in a new reader while a bad one will turn people off. Yet one person's good cover is another person's bad one, and sometimes even a beautiful and correct cover can give entirely the wrong expectation. (For instance, I know of a non-Discworld book with a cover I adore, but people who expect the theme of the cover to be the main action of the book are disappointed. It's a fine book, but because they were given the wrong expectation, they fail to notice the reasons the book is good.)
I am currently reading this one...and although I am merely 200 pages in...it seems far more sophisticated and enjoyable than all that came before. What could be simply interpreted as a parody of "Macbeth", has been fully realized as a novel. Characters and themes have been fully fleshed out, the plot seems to be providing each of the main characters with something of a discernible arc, and the imagery and prose have been a delight throughout.
For example:
Sir Terry spends around five paragraphs in basically an extended metaphor (or is it just a metaphor in Discworld?) providing a storm with subjectivity: "If weather was people,this storm would be filling in time wearing a cardboard hat in hamburger hell." I love it!
And he develops the "Macbeth" connections in entertaining and fascinating ways. The growing presence of the Fool as a political adviser and his instruction in how to use political jargon to promote the Duke's paranoid agenda...it chimes with the theme of equivocation and double speak, "lying like the truth", in the source material. Just great stuff. And of course there is always Granny Weatherwax.
I hope it continues this brilliance into the second half of the novel. ray:
I consider this book the start of where Terry really starts coming into his own as a satirist of considerable note. (Actually, there were distinct signs of this in Mort as well.) I don't think you will be disappointed with the second half either but it might help if you have a passing knowledge of Shakespeare.
I agree. Even though Mort was a big step forward, Wyrd Sisters is the book where Pterry finally moves away from trying to be the Douglas Adams of fantasy and emerges with a truly original narrative voice. He's not quite at the point in his career where his work achieves the level of profundity that will carry through most of his remaining work, but you see many vestiges of it here.
Hey Mimpsey! I’m glad you’re having such a good time with the witches! You can bet on it the story gets better! I’m currently rereading Wyrd Sisters and enjoying it a lot too!
Tell us all about it when you finish it! :icon-wink:
And so I finished it a few days ago and am now about 200 pages into the next one...
And it did maintain the brilliance throughout...the play was a fitting climax as they were building on the drama as a narrative theme...the merging of "Macbeth" and "Hamlet"...and it really worked for me. The wit and humor were a constant...some of it even being quite racy by DW standards...mostly coming from Nanny Ogg.
There were several questions raised that I don't think were addressed in the novel...for instance, the use of the spell to move time forward employed by Granny Weatherwax...did this age everyone on the Discworld fifteen years forward? Did it only age people in the region of the Ramtops? How did this play with Death's timelines and job performance? It was hilarious that Black Aliss was responsible for pretty much every evil deed done in the famous fairy tales...her tooth decay caused by her gingerbread house...oh my ribs!
That said...the characters were what really made this novel for me...the Wyrd Sisters themselves were wonderfully realized, clearly defined, and carefully developed. I understood each of the main characters motivations! This was a big problem for the last novel, but not so here. Each character felt so vivid...I can't wait to revisit them in a few books.
Sir Terry's thoughtful commentary was subtly realized and appreciated throughout...I recall vividly the Fool's reflection on the horror's of being trained to be funny...how comedy could be no laughing matter...and I couldn't help but think of Sir Terry's good friend Neil Gaiman's comments regarding his work on Discworld...that he strove so hard to prove that comic novels could be serious as well: "The opposite of funny isn't serious. The opposite of funny is not funny."
It's a very clever title by Terry.
