TEXT:
ACT III - SCENE V. A Heath.
Thunder. Enter the three Witches meeting HECATE
First Witch
Why, how now, Hecate! You look angerly.
HECATE
Have I not reason, beldams as you are,
Saucy and overbold? How did you dare
To trade and traffic with Macbeth
In riddles and affairs of death;
And I, the mistress of your charms,
The close contriver of all harms,
Was never called to bear my part,
Or show the glory of our art?
And, which is worse, all you have done
Hath been but for a wayward son,
Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do,
Loves for his own ends, not for you.
But make amends now: get you gone,
And at the pit of Acheron
Meet me i' the morning: thither he
Will come to know his destiny:
Your vessels and your spells provide,
Your charms and every thing beside.
I am for the air; this night I'll spend
Unto a dismal and a fatal end:
Great business must be wrought ere noon:
Upon the corner of the moon
There hangs a vaporous drop profound;
I'll catch it ere it come to ground:
And that distilled by magic sleights
Shall raise such artificial sprites
As by the strength of their illusion
Shall draw him on to his confusion:
He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
He hopes 'bove wisdom, grace and fear:
And you all know, security
Is mortals' chiefest enemy.
Music and a song within: “Come away, come away” etc.
Hark! I am called; my little spirit, see,
Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me.
Exit
First Witch
Come, let's make haste; she'll soon be back again.
Exeunt
NOTES:
Thomas Middleton
There is a consistent argument that Thomas Middleton - himself the author of a play called The Witch - may have written this scene or interpolated it into Macbeth. Hecate here speaks in an unusual metre (and why wouldn’t she, since she’s an unusual character?) - and her presence and her text have long been under the microscope.
Hecate
As we’ve previously mentioned, Hecate was an Ancient Greek goddess of witchcraft, with a particular association with nighttime and the moon. She mentions that she will be departing to collect a little magical droplet that is hanging from the moon’s crescent - a mighty power to have, indeed.
Beldam
Even though one might be tempted to think that beldam (belle dame) might mean a beautiful lady, in fact it’s the opposite. It’s a rather derogatory word for a hag, or an unpleasant old woman. Or, of course, a witch.
Acheron
What with Hecate being Greek, it’s no accident that she suggests a Greek location for her next meeting with the witches. Acheron was one of the rivers in the Greek underworld (along with the Styx and the Lethe).
Vaporous Drop
Shakespeare gives yet another classical reference here; whatever about him having “small Latin and less Greek”, he rather impressively quotes an obscure text from Lucan, in whose Pharsalia a witch called Erichtho harvests a strange foam that the moon drops onto various herbs. Hecate is surely not to be outdone by one of her servants, so she’s about to fly off and get some of this dangerous magic for herself!