At which I post away,

With all the speed I may.

Where's Puckle?

Witch. Here.

Hec. Where Stradling?

Witch. Here.

Enter Witches.

And Hopper too, and Hellway too.

We want but you, we want but you.

8 Witch. Come away, come away, make up th' account.

Hec. With new fall'n dew,

From church-yard yew,

I will but 'noint, and then I'll mount.

Now I'm furnish'd for my flight.

[Symphony, whilst Hecate places herself in the Machine.

Now I go, and now I fly,

Malkin my sweet spirit and I.

O what a dainty pleasure's this,
To sail in the air,

When the moon shines fair,

To sing, to dance, to toy and kiss,

Over woods, high rocks and mountains;

Over hills and misty fountains;

Over steeples, tow'rs, and turrets,

We fly by night 'mong troops of spirits.

Cher. We dy by night 'mong troops of spirits

BY

SAM. JOHNSON & GEO. STEEVENS,

AND

THE VARIOUS COMMENTATORS

UPON

МАСВЕТН.

WRITTEN BY

WILL. SHAKSPERE.

-SIC ITUR AD ASTRA.

VIRG.

LONDON:

Printed for, and under the Direction of,

JOHN BELL, British-Library, STRAND, Bookseller to His Royal Highness the PRINCE OF WALES.

M DCC LXXXVII.

ANNOTATIONS

UPON

МАСВЕТ Н.

ACT I.

Line 3. Hurly-burly.] HOWEVER mean this word nay seem to modern ears, it came recommended to Shakspere by the authority of Henry Pecham, who, in the year 1577, published a book professing to treat on the ornaments of language: it is called. The Garden of Eloquence, and has this passage "Onomatopeia, when we invent, devise, fayne, and make a name, immitating the sownd of that it signifyeth, as hurliburly, for an uprore, and tumultuous stirre." HENDERSON.

4. When the battle's lost and won:] i. e. the battle, in which Macbeth was then engaged. These wayward sisters, as we may see in a note on the third scene of this act, were much concerned in battles. Hæ nominantur Valkyriæ; quas quodvis ad prælium Odinus mittit. WARBURTON,

8. There to meet with Macbeth.] Thus the old copy. Mr. Pope, and after him other editors, read:

There I go to meet Macbeth.

The insertion, however, seems to be injudicious. To meet with Macbeth, was the general design of all the witches in going to the heath, and not the particular business or motive of any one of them in distinction from the rest; as the interpolated words, I go, in the mouth of the third witch, would most certainly imply. Perhaps Shakspere wrote, to GREET.

-Gray-malkin !

STEEVENS.

From a little

9. black letter book, entitled, Beware the Cat, 1584, I find it was permitted to a Witch to take on her a cattes body nine times. Mr. Upton observes, that, to understand this passage, we should suppose one familiar calling with the voice of a cat, and another with the croaking of a toad.

Again, in Newes from Scotland, &c. (a pamphlet, of which the reader will find the entire title in a future note on this play) "Moreover she confessed, that at the time when his majestie was in Denmarke, shee beeing accompanied with the parties before specially mentioned, tooke a cat and christened it, and afterward bound to each part of the cat the cheefest part of a dead man, and several jointes of his bodie, and that in the night following the said cat was conveyed into the middest of the sea by all these witches sayling in their riddles or cives as is aforesaid, and so left the said cat right before the towne of Leith in Scotland.