Double, double, toil and trouble by William Shakespeare
Since I’m going to see this on Thursday, I decided to reread Macbeth tonight. This is probably my favorite Shakespearean play, possibly because we spent months studying it in AP English in HS. Blood? Violence? Betrayal? Insanity? Ambition? Crazy Scots killing each other? Macbeth has it all, not to mention freaky witches, from whom we get today’s selection. (I previously posted my favorite passage.)
Double, double, toil and trouble
FROM MACBETH, ACT IV, SCENE I
By William Shakespeare
FIRST WITCH
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw;
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelt’red venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ th’ 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 pow’rful 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,
Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ th’ dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver’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 chawdron,
For th’ ingredience of our cau’dron.
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.
