Hath so exasperate the king, that he Len. Sent he to Macduff? Lord. He did: and with an absolute, Sir, not I, The cloudy messenger turns me his back, And hums; as who should say, You'll rue the time That clogs me with this answer. Len. His message ere he come; that a swift blessing Lord. I'll send my prayers with him! [Exeunt. ACT IV. SCENE I. A dark Cave. In the middle, a Cauldron boiling. Thunder. Enter the three Witches1. 1 Witch. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd. 2 Witch. Thrice; and once the hedge-pig whin'd2. 4 Exasperate, for exasperated. 5 to this our suffering country Under a hand accursed.' The construction is to this our country, suffering under a hand accursed.' 1Enter the three Witches.' Dr. Johnson has called the reader's attention to the judgment with which Shakspeare has selected all the circumstances of his infernal ceremonies, and how exactly he has conformed to common opinions and traditions.' 2 Thrice; and once the hedge-pig whin'd.' The urchin or hedgehog, like the toad, for its solitariness, the ugliness of its 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. Gulf, the throat. Of the ravin'd' salt-sea shark; Gall of goat; and slips of yew, All. Double, double toil and trouble; 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, 11 2 Witch. By the pricking of my thumbs 11, Something wicked this way comes :Open, locks, whoever knocks. Enter MACBETH. 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 12 waves Confound and swallow navigation up; 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.' 11By 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. Even till destruction sicken, answer me To what I ask you. 1 Witch. 2 Witch. 3 Witch. Speak. Demand. We'll answer. 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 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.' |