3 Witch. Harper cries:-'Tis time, 'tis time. All. Double, double toil and trouble; 3 Witch. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf; appearance, and from a popular belief that it sucked or poisoned the udders of cows, was adopted into the demonologic system; and its shape was sometimes supposed to be assumed by mischievous elves. Hence it was one of the plagues of Caliban in the Tempest. 3 Coldest stone.' The old copy reads cold stone;' the emendation is Steevens's. Mr. Boswell thinks that the alteration was unnecessary. See his Essay on Shakspeare's Versification. 4 Sweltered. This word is employed to signify that the animal was moistened with its own cold exudations. So in the twenty-second song of Drayton's Polyolbion : : 'And all the knights there dubb'd the morning but before, The evening sun beheld there sweltered in their gore.' 5 The blind-worm is the slow-worm. Thus in Drayton's Noah's Flood: The small eyed slow-worm held of many blind. 6 Gulf, the throat. Of the ravin'd' salt-sea shark; Gall of goat; and slips of yew, 2 Witch. Cool it with a baboon's blood, Enter HECATE, and the other three Witches. Hec. O, well done! I commend your pains; 7 To ravin according to Minshew is to devour, to eat greedily. Ravin'd, therefore, may be glutted with prey. Unless, with Malone, we suppose that Shakspeare used ravin'd for ravenous, the passive participle for the adjective. In Horman's Vulgaria, 1519, occurs Thou art a ravenar of delycatis'. 8 Sliver is a common word in the north, where it means to cut a piece or slice. Again in King Lear: She who herself will sliver and disbranch.' 9 i. e. entrails; a word formerly in common use in books of cookery, in one of which, printed in 1597, is a receipt to make a pudding of a calf's chaldron. SONG 10. Black spirits and white, You that mingle may. 11 2 Witch. By the pricking of my thumbs 11, Something wicked this way comes: Open, locks, whoever knocks. Enter MACBЕТН. Macb. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags? What is't you do? All. A deed without a name. Macb. I conjure you, by that which you profess, (Howe'er you come to know it), answer me: Though you untie the winds, and let them fight Against the churches; though the yesty waves Confound and swallow navigation up; 12 Though bladed corn be lodg'd 13, and trees blown down; Though castles topple 14 on their warders' heads; Though palaces, and pyramids, do slope Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure Of nature's germins 15 tumble all together, 10 Black spirits and white.' The original edition of this play only contains the two first words of this song; the entire stanza is found in The Witch, by Middleton, and is there called A charme Song about a Vessel.' 11 By the pricking of my thumbs.' It is a very ancient superstition, that all sudden pains of the body, and other sensations which could not naturally be accounted for, were presages of somewhat that was shortly to happen. 12 i. e. foaming, frothy. 13 i. e. laid flat by wind or rain. 14 Topple, tumble. 15 Germens, seeds which have begun to sprout or germinate. 1 Witch. Say, if thou'dst rather hear it from our mouths, Or from our masters'? Macb. Call them, let me see them. 1 Witch. Pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten Her nine farrow 16; grease, that's sweaten From the murderer's gibbet, throw Into the flame. All. Come, high, or low; Thyself, and office, deftly 17 show. Thunder. An Apparition of an armed Head rises 18. Macb. Tell me, thou unknown power, 1 Witch. He knows thy thought; Hear his speech, but say thou nought 19. 16 Pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten Shakspeare probably caught this idea from the laws of Kenneth II. king of Scotland: If a sow eate hir pigges, let hyr be stoned to death and buried, that no man eate of hyr flesh.'Holinshed's History of Scotland, ed. 1577, p. 181. 17 Deftly is adroitly, dexterously. 18 The armed head represents symbolically Macbeth's head cut off and brought to Malcolm by Macduff, The bloody child is Macduff, untimely ripped from his mother's womb. The child, with a crown on his head and a bough in his hand, is the royal Malcolm, who ordered his soldiers to hew them down a bough, and bear it before them to Dunsinane. 19 Silence was necessary during all incantations. So in Dr. Faustus: Your grace demand no questions, But in dumb silence let them come and go.' And in The Tempest: be mute, or else our spell is marr'd.' App. Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! beware Macduff; Beware the thane of Fife.-Dismiss me :-Enough 20. [Descends. Macb. Whate'er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks; Thou hast harp'd 21 my fear aright:-But one word more: 1 Witch. He will not be commanded: Here's another, More potent than the first. Thunder. An Apparition of a bloody Child rises. App. Macb. Had I three ears, I'd hear thee 22. App. Be bloody, bold, And resolute: laugh to scorn the power of man, For none of woman born shall harm Macbeth 23. Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! [Descends. Macb. Then live, Macduff; What need I fear of thee? But yet I'll make assurance double sure, 20 Spirits thus evoked were supposed to be impatient of being questioned. The spirit in the Second Part of King Henry the VIth, Act iv. Sc. 1, says:— 'Ask what thou wilt:-That I had said and done.' 21 Harp'd, touched on a passion as a harper touches a string. 22 Had I three ears, I'd hear thee.' This singular expression probably means no more than 'I will listen to thee with all attention.' So Ho 23 For none of woman born shall harm Macbeth.' linshed: And surely hereupon he had put Macduff to death, but that a certeine witch, whom he had in great trust, had told him, that he should never be slaine with man borne of anie woman, nor vanquished till the wood of Bernane came to the castle of Dunsinane. This prophecy put all fear out of his heart.' |