"What are these,
So withered and so wild in their attire,
That look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth,
And yet are on't? Live you, or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By each at once her chappy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so."
It is in the first moment of surprise that the sisters, appearing so
suddenly, seem to Banquo unlike the inhabitants of this earth. When he
recovers from the shock and is capable of deliberate criticism, he sees
chappy fingers, skinny lips--in fact, nothing to distinguish them from
poverty-stricken, ugly old women but their beards. A more accurate
poetical counterpart to the prose descriptions given by contemporary
writers of the appearance of the poor creatures who were charged with
the crime of witchcraft could hardly have been penned. Scot, for
instance, says, "They are women which commonly be old, lame,
bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of wrinkles.... They are leane and
deformed, showing melancholie in their faces;"[1] and Harsnet describes
a witch as "an old weather-beaten crone, having her chin and knees
meeting for age, walking like a bow, leaning on a staff, hollow-eyed,
untoothed, furrowed, having her lips trembling with palsy, going
mumbling in the streets; one that hath forgotten her Pater-noster, yet
hath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab."[2] It must be remembered
that these accounts are by two sceptics, who saw nothing in the witches
but poor, degraded old women. In a description which assumes their
supernatural power such minute details would not be possible; yet there
is quite enough in Banquo's description to suggest neglect, squalor, and
misery. But if this were not so, there is one feature in the
description of the sisters that would settle the question once and for
ever. The beard was in Elizabethan times the recognized characteristic
of the witch. In one old play it is said, "The women that come to us for
disguises must wear beards, and that's to say a token of a witch;"[3]
and in another, "Some women have beards; marry, they are half
witches;"[4] and Sir Hugh Evans gives decisive testimony to the fact
when he says of the disguised Falstaff, "By yea and no, I think, the
'oman is a witch indeed: I like not when a 'oman has a great peard; I
spy a great peard under her muffler."[5]
[Footnote 1: Discoverie, book i. ch. 3, p. 7.]
[Footnote 2: Harsnet, Declaration, p. 136.]
[Footnote 3: Honest Man's Fortune, II. i. Furness, Variorum, p. 30.]
[Footnote 4: Dekker's Honest Whore, sc. x. l. 126.]
[Footnote 5: Merry Wives of Windsor, Act IV. sc. ii.]
94. Every item of Banquo's description indicates that he is speaking of
witches; nothing in it is incompatible with that supposition. Will it
apply with equal force to Norns? It can hardly be that these mysterious
mythical beings, who exercise an incomprehensible yet powerful influence
over human destiny, could be described with any propriety in terms so
revolting. A veil of wild, weird grandeur might be thrown around them;
but can it be supposed that Shakspere would degrade them by representing
them with chappy fingers, skinny lips, and beards? It is particularly to
be noticed, too, that although in this passage he is making an almost
verbal transcript from Holinshed, these details are interpolated without
the authority of the chronicle. Let it be supposed, for an instant,
that the text ran thus--
_Banquo._ ... What are these
So withered and so wild in their attire,[1]
That look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth,
And yet are on't?[2] Live you, or are you ought
That man may question?[3]
_Macbeth._ Speak if you can, what are you?
_1st Witch._ All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis![4]
_2nd Witch._ All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Cawdor![5]
_3rd Witch._ All hail, Macbeth! thou shall be king hereafter.[6]
This is so accurate a dramatization of the parallel passage in
Holinshed, and so entire in itself, that there is some temptation to ask
whether it was not so written at first, and the interpolated lines
subsequently inserted by the author. Whether this be so or not, the
question must be put--Why, in such a passage, did Shakspere insert three
lines of most striking description of the appearance of witches? Can any
other reason be suggested than that he had made up his mind to replace
the "goddesses of Destinie" by the witches, and had determined that
there should be no possibility of any doubt arising about it?
[Footnote 1: Three women in strange and wild apparel,]
[Footnote 2: resembling creatures of elder world,]
[Footnote 3: whome when they attentivelie beheld, woondering much at the
sight, the first of them spake and said;]
[Footnote 4: 'All haile, Makbeth, thane of Glammis' (for he had latelie
entered into that dignitie and office by the death of his father
Sinell).]
[Footnote 5: The second of them said; 'Haile, Makbeth, thane of
Cawder.']
[Footnote 6: But the third said; 'All haile, Makbeth, that heereafter
shalt be king of Scotland.']
95. The next objection is, that the sisters exercise powers that witches
did not possess. They can "look into the seeds of time, and say which
grain will grow, and which will not." In other words, they foretell
future events, which witches could not do. But this is not the fact. The
recorded witch trials teem with charges of having prophesied what things
were about to happen; no charge is more common. The following, quoted by
Charles Knight in his biography of Shakspere, might almost have
suggested the simile in the last-mentioned lines. Johnnet Wischert is
"indicted for passing to the green growing corn in May, twenty-two years
since or thereby, sitting thereupon tymous in the morning before the
sun-rising, and being there found and demanded what she was doing,
thou[1] answered, I shall tell thee; I have been peeling the blades of
the corn. I find it will be a dear year, the blade of the corn grows
withersones [contrary to the course of the sun], and when it grows
sonegatis about [with the course of the sun] it will be good cheap
year."[2] The following is another apt illustration of the power, which
has been translated from the unwieldy Lowland Scotch account of the
trial of Bessie Roy in 1590. The Dittay charged her thus: "You are
indicted and accused that whereas, when you were dwelling with William
King in Barra, about twelve years ago, or thereabouts, and having gone
into the field to pluck lint with other women, in their presence made a
compass in the earth, and a hole in the midst thereof; and afterwards,
by thy conjurations thou causedst a great worm to come up first out of
the said hole, and creep over the compass; and next a little worm came
forth, which crept over also; and last [thou] causedst a great worm to
come forth, which could not pass over the compass, but fell down and
died. Which enchantment and witchcraft thou interpretedst in this form:
that the first great worm that crept over the compass was the goodman
William King, who should live; and the little worm was a child in the
goodwife's womb, who was unknown to any one to be with child, and that
the child should live; and, thirdly, the last great worm thou
interpretedst to be the goodwife, who should die: _which came to pass
after thy speaking_."[3] Surely there could hardly be plainer instances
of looking "into the seeds of time, and saying which grain will grow,
and which will not," than these.
[Footnote 1: Sic.]
[Footnote 2: p. 438.]
[Footnote 3: Pitcairn, I. ii. 207. Cf. also Ibid. pp. 212, 213, and 231,
where the crime is described as "foreknowledge."]
96. Perhaps this is the most convenient place for pointing out the full
meaning of the first scene of "Macbeth," and its necessary connection
with the rest of the play. It is, in fact, the fag-end of a witches'
sabbath, which, if fully represented, would bear a strong resemblance to
the scene at the commencement of the fourth act. But a long scene on
such a subject would be tedious and unmeaning at the commencement of the
play. The audience is therefore left to assume that the witches have
met, performed their conjurations, obtained from the evil spirits the
information concerning Macbeth's career that they desired to obtain, and
perhaps have been commanded by the fiends to perform the mission they
subsequently carry through. All that is needed for the dramatic effect
is a slight hint of probable diabolical interference, and that Macbeth
is to be the special object of it; and this is done in as artistic a
manner as is perhaps imaginable. In the first scene they obtain their
information; in the second they utter their prediction. Every minute
detail of these scenes is based upon the broad, recognized facts of
witchcraft.
97. It is also suggested that the power of vanishing from the sight
possessed by the sisters--the power to make themselves air--was not
characteristic of witches. But this is another assertion that would not
have been made, had the authorities upon the subject been investigated
with only slight attention. No feature of the crime of witchcraft is
better attested than this; and the modern witch of story-books is still
represented as riding on a broomstick--a relic of the enchanted rod with
which the devil used to provide his worshippers, upon which to come to
his sabbaths.[1] One of the charges in the indictment against the
notorious Dr. Fian ran thus: "Fylit for suffering himself to be careit
to North Berwik kirk, as if he had bene souchand athoirt [whizzing
above] the eird."[2] Most effectual ointments were prepared for
effecting this method of locomotion, which have been recorded, and are
given below[3] as an illustration of the wild kind of recipes which
Shakspere rendered more grim in his caldron scene. The efficacy of these
ointments is well illustrated by a story narrated by Reginald Scot,
which unfortunately, on account of certain incidents, cannot be given in
his own terse words. The hero of it happened to be staying temporarily
with a friend, and on one occasion found her rubbing her limbs with a
certain preparation, and mumbling the while. After a time she vanished
out of his sight; and he, being curious to investigate the affair,
rubbed himself with the remaining ointment, and almost immediately he
found himself transported a long distance through the air, and
deposited right in the very midst of a witches' sabbath. Naturally
alarmed, he cried out, "'In the name of God, what make I heere?' and
upon those words the whole assemblie vanished awaie."[4]
[Footnote 1: Scot, book iii. ch. iii. p. 43.]
[Footnote 2: Pitcairn, I. ii. 210. Cf. also Ibid. p. 211. Scot, book
iii. ch. vii. p. 51.]
[Footnote 3: "Sundrie receipts and ointments made and used for the
transportation of witches, and other miraculous effects.
"Rx. The fat of yoong children, & seeth it with water in a brazen
vessell, reseruing the thickest of that which remaineth boiled in the
bottome, which they laie up & keep untill occasion serveth to use it.
They put hereinto Eleoselinum, Aconitum, frondes populeas, & Soote."
This is given almost verbatim in Middleton's Witch.
"Rx. Sium, Acarum Vulgare, Pentaphyllon, the bloud of a Flittermouse,
Solanum Somniferum, & oleum."