3 WITCH. And I another. 1 WITCH. I myself have all the other; And the very ports they blow, All the quarters that they know (as it was the belief of the times,) that though a witch could assume the form of any animal she pleased, the tail would still be wanting. The reason given by some of the old writers, for such a deficiency, is, that though the hands and feet, by an easy change, might be converted into the four paws of a beast, there was still no part about a woman which corresponded with the length of tail common to almost all our four-footed creatures. STEEVens. 6 I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do. I' the shipman's card. Look what I have.——— Show me, show me. Thus do go about, about ;] As I cannot help supposing this scene to have been uniformly metrical when our author wrote it, in its present state I suspect it to be clogged with interpolations, or mutilated by omissions. Want of corresponding rhymes to the foregoing lines, induce me to hint at vacuities which cannot be supplied, and intrusions which (on the bare authority of conjecture) must not be expelled. Were even the condition of modern transcripts for the stage understood by the public, the frequent accidents by which a poet's meaning is depraved, and his measure vitiated, would need no illustration. STEEVENS. 7 I'll give thee a wind.] This free gift of a wind is to be considered as an act of sisterly friendship, for witches were supposed to sell them. So, in Summer's Last Will and Testament, 1600: 66 in Ireland and in Denmark both, "Witches for gold will sell a man a wind, "Which in the corner of a napkin wrap'd, "Shall blow him safe unto what coast he will." Drayton, in his Mooncalf, says the same. It may be hoped, however, that the conduct of our witches did not resemble that of one of their relations, as described in an Appendix to the old translation of Marco Paolo, 1579: "they demanded that he should give them a winde; and he shewed, setting his handes behinde, from whence the wind should come," &c. STEEVENS. 8 And the VERY PORTS they blow,] As the word very is here of no other use than to fill up the verse, it is likely that Shakspeare wrote various, which might be easily mistaken for very, being either negligently read, hastily pronounced, or imperfectly heard. JOHNSON. The very ports are the exact ports. Very is used here (as in a I' the shipman's card. I will drain him dry as hay': thousand instances which might be brought) to express the declaration more emphatically. Instead of ports, however, I had formerly read points; but erroneously. In ancient language, to blow sometimes means to blow upon. So, in Dumain's Ode in Love's Labour's Lost: 66 Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow-." i. e. blow upon them. We still say, it blows East, or West, without a preposition. STEEVENS. The substituted word was first given by Sir W. D'Avenant, who, in his alteration of this play, has retained the old, while at the same time he furnished Mr. Pope with the new reading: 9 66 66 I myself have all the other. And then from every port they blow, "From all the points that seamen know." MALONE. the shipman's card.] So, in The Microcosmos of John Davies, of Hereford, 4to. 1605 : "Beside the chiefe windes and collaterall 66 (Which are the windes indeed of chiefe regard) "Seamen observe more, thirtie two in all, "All which are pointed out upon the carde." The card is the paper on which the winds are marked under the pilot's needle; or perhaps the sea-chart, so called in our author's age. Thus, in The Loyal Subject, by Beaumont and Fletcher: "The card of goodness in your minds, that shews you "When you sail false." 66 Again, in Churchyard's Prayse and Reporte of Maister Martyne Forboisher's Voyage to Meta Incognita, &c. 12mo. bl. 1. 1578: "There the generall gaue a speciall card and order to his captaines for the passing of the straites," &c. STEEVENS. 2 dry as hay:] So, Spenser, in his Fairy Queen, b. iii. c. ix. : "But he is old and withered as hay." STEEVENS. Sleep shall, neither night nor day, Hang upon his PENT-HOUSE LID ;] So, in Decker's Gul's Horne-booke: "The two eyes are the glasse windowes, at which light disperses itselfe into every roome, having goodly penthouses of haire to overshaddow them." So, also in David and Goliah, by Michael Drayton : "His brows, like two steep pent-houses, hung down This poem is inserted in a Collection which Drayton entitles Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine, The Muses Elysium, which being dedicated to Edward Earl of Dorset, "Knight of the most noble order of the Garter," must have been published after 1625, that nobleman having been then invested with the order of the garter. I do not know of any earlier edition of the piece entitled David and Goliah; but another poem which appears in this collection, Moses his Birth and Miracles, had been published originally in 4to. in 1604, under the title of Moyses in A Map of his Miracles. MALONE. 3 He shall live a man FORBID:] i. e. as one under a curse, an interdiction. So, afterwards in this play: "By his own interdiction stands accurs'd." So, among the Romans, an outlaw's sentence was, "Aquæ et ignis interdictio; i. e. he was forbid the use of water and fire, which implied the necessity of banishment. THEObald. Mr. Theobald has very justly explained forbid by accursed, but without giving any reason of his interpretation. To bid is originally to pray, as in this Saxon fragment: He is pir bit bote, &c. "He is wise that prays and makes amends." As to forbid therefore implies to prohibit, in opposition to the word bid in its present sense, it signifies by the same kind of opposition to curse, when it is derived from the same word in its primitive meaning. JOHNSON. To bid, in the sense of to pray, occurs in the ancient MS. romance of The Sowdon of Babyloyne, p. 78: 66 'Kinge Charles kneled adown "To kisse the relikes so goode, "And badde there an oryson 66 To that lorde that deyde on rode." A forbodin fellow, Scot. signifies an unhappy one. STEEVENS. It may be added, that "bitten and Verbieten, in the German, signify to pray and to interdict." S. W. 4 Shall he DWINDLE, &c.] This mischief was supposed to be put in execution by means of a waxen figure, which represented the person who was to be consumed by slow degrees. So, in Webster's Dutchess of Malfy, 1623: “Than wer't my picture fashion'd out of wax, So Holinshed, speaking of the witchcraft practised to destroy King Duffe: 66 found one of the witches roasting upon a wooden broch Though his bark cannot be lost, 2 WITCH. Show me, show me. 1 WITCH. Here I have a pilot's thumb, Wreck'd, as homeward he did come. 3 WITCH. A drum, a drum; Macbeth doth come. [Drum within. ALL. The weird sisters, hand in hand", Posters of the sea and land, an image of wax at the fire, resembling in each feature the king's person, &c. for as the image did waste afore the fire, so did the bodie of the king break forth in sweat. And as for the words of the inchantment, they served to keep him still waking from sleepe," &c. This may serve to explain the foregoing passage: "Sleep shall, neither night nor day, "Hang upon his pent-house lid." See vol. iv. p. 55. STEEVENS 5 Though his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-toss'd.] So, in Newes from Scotland, &c. a pamphlet already quoted: "Againe it is confessed, that the said christened cat was the cause of the Kinges Majesties shippe, at his coming forthe of Denmarke, had a contrarie winde to the rest of his shippes then beeing in his companie, which thing was most straunge and true, as the Kinges Majestie acknowledgeth, for when the rest of the shippes had a faire and good winde, then was the winde contrarie and altogether against his Majestie. And further the sayde witch declared, that his Majestie had never come safely from the sea, if his faith had not prevayled above their ententions." To this circumstance perhaps our author's allusion is sufficiently plain. STEEVENS. 6 The WEIRD sisters, hand in hand,] These weird sisters were the Fates of the northern nations; the three handmaids of Odin. "Hæ nominantur Valkyriæ, quas quodvis ad prælium Odinus mittit. Hæ viros morti destinant, et victoriam gubernant. Gunna, et Rota, et Parcarum minima Skullda: per aëra et maria equitant semper ad morituros eligendos; et cædes in potestate habent." Bartholinus de Causis contemptæ à Danis adhuc Gentilibus mortis. It is for this reason that Shakspeare makes them three; and calls them, Thus do go about, about; Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, "Posters of the sea and land: " and intent only upon death and mischief. However, to give this part of his work the more dignity, he intermixes, with this Northern, the Greek and Roman superstitions; and puts Hecate at the head of their enchantments. And to make it still more familiar to the common audience (which was always his point) he adds, for another ingredient, a sufficient quantity of our own country superstitions concerning witches; their beards, their cats, and their broomsticks. So that his witch-scenes are like the charm they prepare in one of them; where the ingredients are gathered from every thing shocking in the natural world, as here, from every thing absurd in the moral. But as extravagant as all this is, the play has had the power to charm and bewitch every audience, from that time to this. WARBURTON. Weird comes from the Anglo-Saxon pynd, fatum, and is used as a substantive signifying a prophecy by the translator of Hector Boethius, in the year 1541, as well as for the Destinies, by Chaucer and Holinshed. "Of the weirdis gevyn to Makbeth and Banqhuo," is the argument of one of the chapters. Gawin Douglas, in his translation of Virgil, calls the Parca, the weird sisters; and in Ane verie excellent and delectabill Treatise intitulit Philotus, quhairin we may persave the greit Inconveniences that fallis out in the Mariage betweene Age and Zouth, Edinburgh, 1603, the word appears again : Again: "How does the quheill of fortune go, 66 Quhat wickit wierd has wrocht our wo." "Quhat neidis Philotus to think ill, "Or zit his wierd to warie?" The other method of spelling [weyward] was merely a blunder of the transcriber or printer. The Valkyrie, or Valkyriur, were not barely three in number. The learned critic might have found, in Bartholinus, not only Gunna, Rota, et Skullda, but also, Scogula, Hilda, Gondula, and Geiroscogula. Bartholinus adds, that their number is yet greater, according to other writers who speak of them. They were the cupbearers of Odin, and conductors of the dead. They were distinguished by the elegance of their forms; and it would be as just to compare youth and beauty with age and deformity, as the Valkyrie of the North with the Witches of Shakspeare. STEEVENS. |