Double, Double Toil and Trouble
Shakespearean text fascinates me, even more so texts that dabbles (somewhat) into the mystics, like in this famous piece of poetry within Macbeth.
Known as the Witches’ chant to some, it is the opening to Act VI.
First Witch:
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
All:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.Second Witch:
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.All:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.Third Witch:
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab.
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.All:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.Second Witch:
Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.Hecates:
O well done! I commend your pains;
And every one shall share i’ the gains;
And now about the cauldron sing,
Live elves and fairies in a ring
Enchanting all that you put in.Second Witch:
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!
I love the choral interpretation and scene painting by Jaakko Mäntyjärvi.
Anyway, just in case you wonder what wicked thing came their way – the witches cast a spell and are interrupted when “something wicked this way comes”—namely, Macbeth himself.
Explore posts in the same categories: Choral, Macbeth, Music, poetry, Shakespeare
