TEXT:
SCENE III. A heath.
Thunder. Enter the three Witches
First Witch
Where hast thou been, sister?
Second Witch
Killing swine.
Third Witch
Sister, where thou?
First Witch
A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap,
And munched, and munched, and munched.
”Give me,” quoth I:
”Aroint thee, witch!” the rump-fed ronyon cries.
Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger:
But in a sieve I'll thither sail,
And, like a rat without a tail,
I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.
Second Witch
I'll give thee a wind.
First Witch
Thou'rt kind.
Third Witch
And I another.
First Witch
I myself have all the other,
And the very ports they blow,
All the quarters that they know
I' the shipman's card.
I will drain him dry as hay.
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his penthouse lid;
He shall live a man forbid:
Weary se'nnights nine times nine
Shall he dwindle, peak and pine:
Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-tossed.
Look what I have.
Second Witch
Show me, show me.
First Witch
Here I have a pilot's thumb,
Wrecked as homeward he did come.
Drum within
Third Witch
A drum, a drum!
Macbeth doth come.
ALL
The weird sisters, hand in hand,
Posters of the sea and land,
Thus do go about, about:
Thrice to thine and thrice to mine
And thrice again, to make up nine.
Peace! the charm's wound up.
Enter MACBETH and BANQUO
NOTES:
Aroint
We don’t have much information about this, but it means something like “begone!”
Runyon
As mentioned, a derogatory term for a woman.
Aleppo
Aleppo is a famous trading port in Syria.
The Tiger
As mentioned, Edward Loomis’ article “The Master of the Tiger” appeared in the autumn 1956 edition of Shakespeare Quarterly. (You can probably find it online or via your library.) The tie-in between the real voyage and Shakespeare’s witchy threat seems so specific that it must be true - although there’s always room for a coincidence!
Se’'nnight
Seven nights make up a week. Fourteen nights make two weeks. And as such a se’ennight is a contraction that means a week, and a fortnight - which people in my part of the world certainly still say - means two weeks.
Edmund Campion
Edmund Campion (1540-1581) was a Jesuit priest. Jesuits in Shakespeare’s time were incredibly daring, moving through secret networks across Protestant Europe hoping to effect a Catholic counter-Reformation and a return to Rome. Campion was captured by priest hunters when he came back from Prague and was subjected to a very grisly death. The essay “The Pilot’s Thumb” by Richard Wilson gives a brilliant insight into the connections between Jesuits, politics, witchcraft and Macbeth, and is a very entertaining read. It is published in The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories, a collection edited by Robert Poole. Stirring stuff!
A Drum
We will talk about it next time, but we have to acknowledge the strangeness of this sound effect. Macbeth and Banquo arrive alone, so who is banging this drum? I think it’s more to do with the thunder that prefigured the witches’ arrival, and a general desire to punctuate and dramatise Macbeth’s long-delayed entrance. (There’s some fun to be had with thumbs and drums and hither comes, but, again, we’ll get to that later…)