A Classic for your Holiday!

Round about the caldron go
I wish you all a happy Samhain!



A dark Cave. In the middle, a Caldron boiling. Thunder.

Enter the three Witches.



1 WITCH:  Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.

2 WITCH:  Thrice and once, the hedge-pig whin’d.

3 WITCH:  Harpier cries:—’tis time! ’tis time!

1 WITCH: Round about the caldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.—
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one;
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!

ALL: Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

2 WITCH:Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron 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 owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL:  Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

3 WITCH:  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 cauldron,
For the ingredients of our caldron.

ALL:  Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

2 WITCH:  Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.



-Act IV, Scene 1 from Macbeth (1606) by William Shakespeare