3 Witch. Harper cries:1-'Tis time, 'tis time.” ; 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,— "Red spirits and grey, Mingle, mingle, mingle, "You that mingle may." And, in a former part: weird sisters, hand in hand, "Thus do go about, about; - "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 uncivilised 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. 8 Thrice the brindel cat bath mew'd.] A cat, from time immemorial, has been the agent and favourite of Witches. This superstitious fancy is pagan, and very ancient; and the original, perhaps, this: "When Galinthia was changed into a cat by the Fates, (says Antonius Liberalis, Metam. c. xxix) by witches, (says Pausanias in his Beotics) Hecate took pity of her, and made her her priestess; in which office she continues 1 Witch. Round about the cauldron go;s In the poison'd entrails throw. to this day. Hecate herself too, when Typhon forced all the gods and goddesses to hide themselves in animals, assumed the shape of a cat. So, Ovid: "Fele soror Phoebi latuit." Warburton. 9 Thrice; and once the hedge-pig whin'd.] Mr. Theobald reads, twice and once, &c and observes that odd numbers are used in all enchantments and magical operations. The remark is just, but the passage was misunderstood. The second Witch only repeats the number which the first had mentioned, in order to confirm what she had said; and then adds, that the bedge-pig had likewise cried, though but once. Or what seems more easy, the he dge-pig had whined thrice, and after an interval whined once again. Even numbers, however, were always reckoned inauspicious. So, in The Honest Lawyer, by S. S. 1616: Sure 't is not a lucky time; the first crow I heard this morning, cried twice. This even, sir, is no good number." Twice and once, however, might be a cant expression. So, in King Henry IV, P. II, Silence says, "I have been merry twice and once, ere now.' Steevens, 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 sometimes supposed to be assumed by mischievous elves. Hence it was one of the plagues of Caliban in The Tempest. T. Warton. 1 Harper cries:] This is some imp, or familiar spirit, concerning whose etymology and office, the reader may be wiser than the editor. Those who are acquainted with Dr. Farmer's pamphlet, will be unwilling to derive the name of Harper from Ovid's Harpalos ab ę rapio. See Upton's Critical obser vations, &c. edit. 1748, p. 155. Harper, however, may be only a mis-spelling, or misprint, for harpy. So, in Marlowe's Tamburlaine, &c. 1590. "And like a harper tyers upon my life." The word cries likewise seems to countenance this supposition. Crying is one of the technical terms appropriated to the noise made by birds of prey. So, in the nineteenth Iliad, 350: « Η δ', ΑΡΠΗ εἰκυῖα τανυπτέρυγι, ΔΙΓΟΦΩΝΩ, « Οὐρανῶ ἐκκατέπαλτο, Thus rendered by Chapman: 2 "And like a barpie, with a voice that shrieks," &c. Steevens. ‚'Tis time, 'tis time.] This familiar does not cry out that it is time for them to begin their enchantments; but cries, i. e. gives them the signal, upon which the third Witch communicates the notice to her sisters: Toad, that under coldest stone,4 Harper cries:-'Tis time, 'tis time. Thus too the Hecate of Middleton, already quoted: Hec.] Heard you the owle yet? "Stad.] Briefely in the copps. "Hec.]'Tis high time for us then." Steevens. 3 Round about the cauldron go;] Milton has caught this image in his Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity: "In dismal dance about the furnace blue." Steevens. coldest stone,] The old copy has-" cold stone." The modern editors-"the cold stone." The slighter change I have made, by substituting the superlative for the positive, has met with the approbation of Dr. Farmer, or it would not have appeared in the text. Steevens. The was added by Mr. Pope. Malone. 5 Days and nights hast —] Old copy-bas. Corrected by Sir T. Hanmer. Malone. 6 Swelter'd venom-] This word seems to be employed by Shakspeare, to signify that the animal was moistened with its own cold exsudations. So, in the twenty-second Song of Drayton's Polyolbion: "And all the knights there dub'd the morning but before, "The evening sun beheld there swelter'd in their gore." In the old translation of Boccace's Novels, [1620] the following sentence also occurs: an huge and mighty toad even weltering (as it were) in a bole full of poison."-" Sweltering in blood" is likewise an expression used by Fuller, in his Church History, p. 37. And in Churchyard's Farewell to the World, 1593, is a similar expression: "He spake great thinges that swelted in his greace." Steevens, 7 Double, double toil and trouble;] As this was a very extraordinary incantation, they were to double their pains about it. I think, therefore, it should be pointed as I have pointed it: Double, double toil and trouble; otherwise the solemnity is abated by the immediate recurrence of the rhyme. Steevens. Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, All. Double, double toil and trouble; Root of hemlock, digg'd i' the dark; Adder's fork,] Thus Pliny, Nat. Hist. book XI, ch. xxxvii : << Serpents have very thin tongues, and the same three-forked." P. Holland's translation, edit. 1601, p. 338. 9 Steevens. blind-worm's sting,] The blind-worm is the slow-worm. So Drayton, in Noah's Flood: "The small-eyed slow-worm held of many blind" Steevens. 1 maw, and gulf,] The gulf is the swallow, the throat. Steevens. In The Mirror for Magistrates, we have "monstrous mawes and gulfes." Henderson. 2— - ravin❜d salt-sea shark;] Mr. M. Mason observes that we should read ravin, instead of ravin'd. So in All's Well that Ends Well, Helena says: "Better it were "I met the ravin lion, when he roar'd And in Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid of the Mill, Gillian says: "When nurse Amaranta "Was seiz❜d on by a fierce and hungry bear, However, in Phineas Fletcher's Locusts, or Appollyonists, 1627, the same word, as it appears in the text of the play before us, occurs: "But slew, devour'd and fill'd his empty maw; "But with his raven'd prey his bowells broke, Ravin'd is glutted with prey. Ravin is the ancient word for prey obtained by violence. So, in Drayton's Polyolbion, Song 7: 62 but a den for beasts of ravin made " The same word occurs again in Measure for Measure. Steevens. To ravin, according to Minshieu, is to devour, or eat greedily. See his DICT. 1617, in v. To devour. I believe our author, with his usual license, used ravin'd for ravenous the passive participle for the adjective. Malone. Liver of blaspheming Jew; Make the gruel thick and slab :5 All. Double, double toil and trouble; 2 Witch. Cool it with a baboon's blood, Then the charm is firm and good. 3 Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse; Sliver is a common word in the North, where it means to cut a piece or a slice. Again, in King Lear: "She who herself will sliver and disbranch." Milton has transplanted the second of these ideas into his Lycidas: perfidious bark "Built in th' eclipse 19 Steevens. 4 Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips;] These ingredients, in all probability, owed their introduction to the detestation in which the Turks were held, on account of the holy wars. So solicitous, indeed, were our neighbours, the French, (from whom most of our prejudices, as well as customs, are derived) to keep this idea awake, that even in their military sport of the quintain, their soldiers were accustomed to point their lances at the figure of a Saracen. Steevens. 5 Finger of birth-strangled &c. Make the gruel thick and slab;] Gray appears to have had this passage in his recollection, when he wrote "Sword that once a monarch bore "Keep the tissue close and strong." Fatal Sisters. Steevens. 6 Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,] Chaudron, i. e. entrails; a word formerly in common use in the books of cookery, in one of which, printed in 1597, I meet with a receipt to make a pudding of a calf's chaldron Again, in Decker's Honest Whore, 1635: "Sixpence a meal wench, as well as heart can wish, with calves' chauldrons and chitterlings." At the coronation feast of Elizabeth of York, queen of Henry VII, among other dishes, one was 66 a swan with chaudron," meaning sauce made with its entrails. See Ives's Select Papers, No. 3, p 140. See also Mr. Pegge's Forme of Cury, a Roll of ancient - English Cookery, &c. 8vo. 1780, p. 66. Steevens. |