Part 9 (1/2)
[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 pa.s.sing 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 compa.s.s 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 compa.s.s; and next a little worm came forth, which crept over also; and last [thou] causedst a great worm to come forth, which could not pa.s.s over the compa.s.s, but fell down and died. Which enchantment and witchcraft thou interpretedst in this form: that the first great worm that crept over the compa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 f.a.g-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 a.s.sume 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 vanis.h.i.+ng from the sight possessed by the sisters--the power to make themselves air--was not characteristic of witches. But this is another a.s.sertion 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 wors.h.i.+ppers, 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 ill.u.s.tration of the wild kind of recipes which Shakspere rendered more grim in his caldron scene. The efficacy of these ointments is well ill.u.s.trated 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 G.o.d, what make I heere?' and upon those words the whole a.s.semblie 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.”
It would seem that fern seed had the same virtue.--I Hen. IV. II. i.]
[Footnote 4: Scot, book iii. ch. vi. p. 46.]
98. The only vestige of a difficulty, therefore, that remains is the use of the term ”weird sisters” in describing the witches. It is perfectly clear that Holinshed used these words as a sort of synonym for the ”G.o.ddesses of Destinie;” but with such a ma.s.s of evidence as has been produced to show that Shakspere elected to introduce witches in the place of the Norns, it surely would not be unwarrantable to suppose that he might retain this term as a poetical and not unsuitable description of the characters to whom it was applied. And this is the less improbable as it can be shown that both words were at times applied to witches. As the quotation given subsequently[1] proves, the Scotch witches were in the habit of speaking of the frequenters of a particular sabbath as ”the sisters;” and in Heywood's ”Witches of Lancas.h.i.+re,” one of the characters says about a certain act of supposed witchcraft, ”I remember that some three months since I crossed a wayward woman; one that I now suspect.”[2]
[Footnote 1: -- 107, p. 114.]
[Footnote 2: Act V. sc. iii.]
99. Here, then, in the very stronghold of the supposed proof of the Norn-theory, it is possible to extract convincing evidence that the sisters are intended to be merely witches. It is not surprising that other portions of the play in which the sisters are mentioned should confirm this view. Banquo, upon hearing the fulfilment of the prophecy of the second witch, clearly expresses his opinion of the origin of the ”foreknowledge” he has received, in the exclamation, ”What, can the devil speak true?” For the devil most emphatically spoke through the witches; but how could he in any sense be said to speak through Norns?
Again, Macbeth informs his wife that on his arrival at Forres, he made inquiry into the amount of reliance that could be placed in the utterances of the witches, ”and learned by the perfectest report that they had more in them than mortal knowledge.”[1] This would be possible enough if witches were the subjects of the investigation, for their chief t.i.tle to authority would rest upon the general opinion current in the neighbourhood in which they dwelt; but how could such an inquiry be carried out successfully in the case of Norns? It is noticeable, too, that Macbeth knows exactly where to find the sisters when he wants them; and when he says--
”More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know, By the worst means, the worst,”[2]
he makes another clear allusion to the traffic of the witches with the devil. After the events recorded in Act IV. sc. i., Macbeth speaks of the prophecies upon which he relies as ”the equivocation of the fiend,”[3] and the prophets as ”these juggling fiends;”[4] and with reason--for he has seen and heard the very devils themselves, the masters of the witches and sources of all their evil power. Every point in the play that bears upon the subject at all tends to show that Shakspere intentionally replaced the ”G.o.ddesses of Destinie” by witches; and that the supposed Norn origin of these characters is the result of a somewhat too great eagerness to unfold a novel and startling theory.