NEN Gallery

SCENE I. A desert place.
Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches
First Witch
When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

Second Witch
When the hurlyburly's done, (note 2)
When the battle's lost and won.

Third Witch
That will be ere the set of sun.

First Witch
Where the place?

Second Witch
Upon the heath.

Third Witch
There to meet with Macbeth.

First Witch
I come, Graymalkin! (note 3)

Second Witch
Paddock calls. (note 4)

Third Witch
Anon.

ALL
Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Exeunt

1) The first known printed copy of MACBETH is the one in the 1623 Folio; and there exists record of its performance in the MS; diary: of Dr. Forman, preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Dr. Forman gives a circumstantial detail of the performance in his diary "In Macbeth, at the Globe, 1610, the 20th of April, Saturday, there was to be observed first, how Macbeth and Banquo, two noblemen of Scotland riding through a wood, there stood before them three women." &c. It is probable, however, that at the period of this performance, "Macbeth" had been written for some time past and had been acted many times; because the words uttered during the vision of the eight kings, in Act IV. Sc.1
" Some I see
That two-fold balls and treble sceptres carry " containing a direct allusion to the union of the three kingdoms of Great Britain by the accession of James I. to the throne of England, give reason to suppose that they were written at a time more nearly subsequent to the epoch when that union took place. James became King of England by the death of Elizabeth, 24th March 1603, and made his entry into London on the 7th of May; the date of his proclamation was the 24th of October 1604. But previous to his proclamation - indeed but a few days after he had entered London - he had already conferred a favour on the theatrical company of which Shakespeare was a member; having on the 17th of May 1603, granted a patent authorising the actors therein mentioned to perform plays not only at the Globe Theatre, Bankside, but in any part of the kingdom; and, furthermore, taking them into his royal pay and patronage, and calling them "the king's servants." It is presumable, therefore, that the compliment of taking a story from Scottish history for his subject, and of introducing the above acceptable allusion was a piece of homage paid by the dramatist to King James soon after his becoming monarch of the united realm. Malone attempted to prove that "Macbeth" was written in 1606; grounding his argument upon two passages in the Porter's speech in Act II Sc. 3 - "Here's a farmer that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty;' and "Here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven." The former passage was supposed by Malone to refer to the known cheapness of corn in the year 1606; and the latter, to refer to the advocacy of equivocation by Henry Garnet, superior of the order of Jesuits, on the occasion of his trial for being concerned in the Gunpowder Plot, which took place also in 1606. The deduction is ingenious; but we cannot think that it goes far towards establishing the exact date at which this tragedy was written, for the reasons that will be found given at greater length in Note 32, Act II However this may be, there seems to be certainty in placing the date of writing "Macbeth" between 1603 and 1610; with every probability that it was soon after the former-named year. Holinshed's " Chronicle" was the historical authority taken by Shakespeare for the incidents of this grandly-poetical drama; and it is most interesting to observe the admirable manner in which he has adopted, selected, arranged, and blended materials in producing one of his noblest works. He has taken a story from the most primitive and simple times, yet has treated it with refinement of composition that elevates the subject, while in nowise injuring the characteristic plainness of the epoch; a story of a murder, a regicide, yet coloured with a rich harmony of painting that glows in gorgeous poetic tints, though nowise embellishing or palliating vice; a story of a sordid witch-superstition, yet exalted into the region of imagination by touches of fancy that still spare no detail of squalor; a story of a chieftain and chieftainess in an era of rudest intellectual cultivation, yet endued with force of character, intelligence, ambition, that make them objects of profoundest moral and metaphysical speculation, while detracting nothing from their naturalness and appropriateness as beings who lived at that rude period. A marvel at once of simplest fitness and loftiest
(2) The hurlyburly 's done. Henry Peacham, in his "Garden of Eloquence," 1577, explains the word "hurlyburly" to mean 'an uprore and tumultuous stirre' - in More's "Utopia," translated by Ralphe Robinson, 1551, we find - "All this busy preparance to war", whereby so many nations for his Bake should be brought into a troublesome hurleyburley, when all his coffers were emptied, his treasures wasted, and his people destroyed" and in Holinshed - "There were such hurlie burlies kept in every place, to the great danger of overthrowing the whole state of all government in this land."
(3) Graymalkin, An old name for a cat; as "paddock" was for a toad. In Scot's "Discoverie of Witchcraft" (1584), there is a passage that serves to illustrate the one in the text - "Some say, they [witches] can keepe devils and spirits, in the likeness of toads and cats."
(4) Paddock calls: - anon! Pope assigned these words to the Second Witch, making the remainder, "Fair is foul," &c., to be spoken by the three witches in concert; and certainly there seems great probability that only the concluding couplet was intended to be said by them all, as a kind of chorus.