And, which is worse, all you have done, Spiteful, and wrathful; who, as others do, Meet me i' the morning; thither he Your vessels, and your spells, provide, Great business must be wrought ere noon : There hangs a vaporous drop profound ; Is mortals' chiefest enemy. Song. [Within.] Come away, come arvay, &c.& Hark, I am call'd; my little spirit, see, Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me. [Exit. 1 Witch. Come, let's make haste; she'll soon be back again. SCENE VI. [Exeunt. Fores. A Room in the Palace. Enter LENOX and another Lord. [6] This vaporous drop seems to have been meant for the same as the virus lunare of the ancients, being a foam which the moon was supposed to shed on particular herbs, or other objects, when strongly solicited by en. chantment. Lucan introduces Erictho using it. L. 6: "et virus large lunare ministrat.” [7] Slights-arts; subtle practices. JOHNSON. STEEV.. [8] This entire song I found in a MS. dramatic piece, entitled, "A Tragi Coomodie called The Witch; long since acted, &c, written by Thomas Middleton." STEEV. And the right-valiant Banquo walk'd too late ; That were the slaves of drink, and thralls of sleep? (As, an't please heaven, he shall not,) they should find What 'twere to kill a father; so should Fleance. But, peace!-for from broad words, and 'cause he fail'd Macduff lives in disgrace: Sir, can you tell Lord. The son of Duncan, From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth, Takes from his high respect: Thither Macduff is gone To wake Northumberland, and warlike Siward: To ratify the work,) we may again Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights; Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives ; Len. Sent he to Macduff? Lord. He did and with an absolute, Sir not I, And hums; as who should say, You'll rue the time Len. And that well might Advise him to a caution, to hold what distance Fly to the court of England, and unfold His message ere he come; that a swift blessing Lord. My prayers with him. ACT IV. [Exeunt. SCENE I-A dark Cave. In the middle a Cauldron boiling. Thunder. Enter the three Witches.9 1.Witch. THRICE the brinded cat hath me w'd. 2 Witch. Thrice; and once the hedge-pig whin'd.' 3 Witch. Harper cries :-'Tis time, 'tis time. 1 Witch. Round about the cauldron go; In the poison'd entrails throw. [9] Scene I-As this is the chief scene of enchantment in the play, it is proper, in this place, to observe, with how much judgment Shakspeare has selected all the circumstances of his infernal ceremonies, and how exactly he has conformed to common opinions and traditions : "Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd." The usual form in which familiar spirits are reported to converse with witches, is that of a cat. A witch, who was tried about half a century before the time of Shakspeare, had a cat named Rutterkin, as the spirit of one of those witches was Grimalkin; and when any mischief was to be done, she used to bid Rutterkin go and fly. But once, when she would have sent Rutterkin to torment a daughter of the Countess of Rutland, instead of going or flying, he only cried mew, from whence she discovered that the lady was out of his power, the power of witches being not universal, but limiteti, as Shakspeare has taken care to inculcate : The common afflictions which the malice of witches produced, were meiancholy, fits, and loss of flesh, which are threatened by one of Shakspeare's witches: "Weary sev'n nights, nine times nine, It was likewise their practice to destroy the cattle of their neighbours, and the farmers have to this day many ceremonies to secure their cows and other cattle from witchcraft; but they seem to have been most suspected of malice against swine. Shakspeare has accordingly maile one of his witches declare that she has been killing swine; and Dr. Harsnet observes, that, about that time, "a sow could not be ill of the measles, nor a girl of the sullens, but some old woman was charged with witchcraft." "Toad, that under the cold stone, "Boil thou first i'the charmed pot." Toads have likewise long lain under the reproach of being by some means accessary to witchcraft, for which reason Shakspeare, in the first scene of Toad, that under coldest stone, Boil thou first i' the charmed pot! this play, calls one of the spirits Paddock or Toad, and now takes care to put a toad first into the pot. When Vaninus was seized at Thoulouse, there was found at his lodgings ingens bufo vitro inclusus, a great toad shut in a vial, upon which those that prosecuted him Veneficium exprobrabant, charged him, I suppose, with witchcraft. "Fillet of a fenny snake, "In the cauldron boil and bake : The propriety of these ingredients may be known by consulting the books De Viribus Animalium and De Mirabilibus Mundi, ascribed to Albertus Magnus, in which the reader, who has time and credulity, may discover very wonderful secrets. "Finger of birth-strangled babe, It has been already mentioned, in the law against witches, that they are supposed to take up dead bodies to use in enchantments, which was confessed by the woman whom King James examined; and who had of a dead body, that was divided in one of their assemblies, two fingers for her share. it is observable, that Shakspeare, on this great occasion, which involves the fate of a king, multiplies all the circumstances of horror. The babe, whose finger is used, must be strangled in its birth; the grease must not only be human, but must have dropped from a gibbet, the gibbet of a murderer; and even the sow, whose blood is used, must have offended nature by devouring her own farrow. These are touches of judgment and genius. "And now about the cauldron sing, "Black spirits and white, "Red spirits and grey, "Mingle, mingle, mingle, And, in a former part: "weird sisters, hand in hand, - "Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, These two passages I have brought together, because they both seem subject to the objection of too much levity for the solemnity of enchantment, and may both be shown, by one quotation from Camden's account of Ireland, to be founded upon a practice really observed by the uncivilized natives of that country: "When any one gets a fall," says the informer of Camden, "he starts up, and, turning three times to the right, digs a hole in the earth; for they imagine that there is a spirit in the ground, and if he falls sick in two or three days, they send one of their women that is skilled in that way to the place, where she says, I call thee from the east, west, north, and south, from the groves, the woods, the rivers, and the fens, from the fairies red, black, white." There was likewise a book written before the time of Shakspeare, describing, amongst other properties, the colours of spirits. Many other circumstances might be particularised, in which Shakspeare has shown his judgment and his knowledge. JOHNSON. [1] The urchin, or hedgehog, from its solitariness, the ugliness of its appearance, and from a popular opinion that it sucked or poisoned the udders of cows, was adopted into the demonologic system, and its shape was some. times supposed to be assumed by mischievous elves. Hence it was one of the plagues of Caliban in The Tempest. T. WARTON. All. Double, double toil and trouble; 2 Witch. Fillet of a fenny snake, All. Double, double toil and trouble; 3 Witch. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf; 2 Witch. Cool it with a baboon's blood, Enter HECATE, and the other three Witches.5 Hec. O, well done! I commend your pains; [2] The gulf is the swallow, the throat. Ravin'd is glutted with prey. Ravin is the ancient word for prey obtained by violence. STEEV. [3] These ingredients, in all probability, owed their introduction to the detestation in which the Turks were held on account of the holy wars. STEEV. [4] Chaudron, i. e. entrails; a word formerly in common use in the books of cookery. STEEV. [5] The insertion of these words (and the other three Witches) in the original copy, must be owing to a mistake. RITSON. Perhaps these additional Witches were brought on for the sake of the approaching dance. The original triad of hags was insufficient for the performance of the "ancient round" introduced in p. 59. STEEV. 36 VOL. III. |