Monday's Poetry: The Witches of Macbeth

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

Are you having trouble planning that all-important All Hallow's Eve meal?  Are the old family standards just not up to snuff, and you need something special to rev up the menu?  Well here to get you started is a sure-fire recipe for an entree that will keep your guests enthralled (if not embalmed) with your culinary expertise.  Try this little cauldron concoction from the recipe box of Will Shakespeare for your soup de jour on Halloween night:


The Three Witches of Macbeth  (Act IV, Scene I)
by William Shakespeare

Round about the cauldron go;  

In the poison’d entrails throw.  

Toad, that under cold stone   

Days and nights hast thirty one  

Swelter’d venom sleeping got,  

Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.  

     Double, double toil and trouble;

     Fire burn and cauldron bubble.  

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 powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.  

     Double, double toil and trouble;  

     Fire burn and cauldron bubble. 

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,    

Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf      

Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,    

Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark, 

Liver of blaspheming Jew,          

Gall of goat, and slips of yew    

Sliver’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 chaudron,       

For the ingredients of our cauldron.

     Double, double toil and trouble; 
     Fire burn and cauldron bubble.