Song of the Witches (Macbeth) Flashcards
by William Shakespeare — tap or click to flip
Flashcard Review
Flashcards: Song of the Witches (Macbeth)
What are the witches doing in this scene?
Brewing a supernatural potion in a cauldron, throwing in increasingly grotesque ingredients to summon dark apparitions for Macbeth.
Where does this scene appear in Macbeth?
Act IV, Scene 1 — in a cavern with a boiling cauldron, just before Macbeth arrives to demand more prophecies.
What is the first ingredient thrown into the cauldron?
A toad that has "under cold stone / Days and nights has thirty-one / Sweated venom sleeping got."
How do the ingredients escalate across the three rounds?
From animal parts (toad, snake, newt) to exotic creatures (dragon, shark, tiger) to human body parts (finger of a birth-strangled babe).
What signals that the charm is complete?
"Cool it with a baboon's blood, / Then the charm is firm and good" — the final ingredient seals the spell.
Who are the Weird Sisters?
The three witches — "weird" comes from Old English "wyrd" meaning fate or destiny. They are supernatural beings who manipulate Macbeth with prophecies.
Why does Macbeth visit the witches in Act IV?
To demand they reveal his future — he has moved from passively receiving prophecies to actively seeking supernatural guidance.
What does the escalation from animal to human ingredients symbolize?
The deepening moral corruption in Macbeth — each step further from the natural order mirrors Macbeth's descent from honorable warrior to tyrant.
How does the chant reflect the theme of equivocation?
"Double, double" refers to duplicity and double meanings — the witches speak truths that mislead, a pattern that runs throughout the play.
What does the cauldron symbolize in the play?
The corruption of the natural order — its grotesque brew mirrors the political turmoil and moral poison that Macbeth's ambition has unleashed on Scotland.
What unusual meter do the witches speak in?
Trochaic tetrameter — a falling rhythm (stressed-unstressed) that sounds like a chant, contrasting with the rest of the play's iambic pentameter.
Why is the metrical contrast significant?
It marks the witches as supernatural beings outside the human world — the falling trochaic rhythm feels off-balance and otherworldly compared to natural iambic speech.
What is the rhyme scheme of the chant?
AABB (rhyming couplets) — creating a nursery-rhyme quality that makes the horrific content even more unsettling.
How does the catalogue (list) device build the scene's effect?
Each new ingredient is more grotesque than the last, creating cumulative horror and disgust that peaks with human body parts.
What role does repetition play in the refrain?
The repeated "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble" functions as a ritual incantation, intensifying the spell with each round.
What does "fenny" mean in "fillet of a fenny snake"?
From a fen (marsh or swamp) — a fenny snake is one that lives in marshy, dark places.
Is "eye of newt" really a folk name for mustard seed?
Probably not — this popular claim has no sources before the 1980s. In Shakespeare's context, the ingredients are meant as literal grotesque animal parts.
What does "chaudron" mean?
Entrails or guts — "a tiger's chaudron" means the internal organs of a tiger, added as one of the final ingredients.
Complete the refrain: "Double, double toil and trouble..."
"Fire burn and cauldron bubble."
What does "For a charm of powerful trouble, / Like a hell-broth boil and bubble" tell us?
The witches explicitly name their potion a "hell-broth" — connecting their craft to damnation and confirming the brew's purpose is to cause powerful trouble.
Why has this chant become associated with Halloween?
It features the archetypal image of witches stirring a cauldron, has a memorable nursery-rhyme rhythm, and its grotesque ingredients capture the playful horror of the holiday.