's works bring out more
graphically the superstition of past ages than the poet's _Macbeth_.

The play is represented as beginning in an open place, where, in a
thunder-storm, three witches appeared and disappeared without doing
any important deed of darkness. They met again on a heath, in another
thunder-storm. One of them told the other hags that she had been away
killing swine. Another told tales of a sailor's wife who had gone to
Aleppo, and threatened to sail thither in a sieve. Macbeth and Banquo
discovered the witches and saluted them. Through the women's subtlety,
the fiend entered Macbeth's heart, and induced him to form the bloody
plans of removing all obstacles in the way of his obtaining the crown,
and handing it down to his descendants. First one victim, and then
another, fell under his treachery. He was sorely troubled: the ghost
of Banquo haunted him.

Hecate joined the witches on the heath, and upbraided them for trading
and trafficking with Macbeth without consulting her, the mistress of
their charms. Away the witches were sent, with instructions to meet at
the pit of Acheron in the morning. There Macbeth was to know his
destiny. Vessels and spells the hags were to provide, while Hecate was
to catch a vaporous drop that hung on the corner of the moon, before
it touched the ground. That drop, distilled by magic sleights, would
raise such sprites, that by the strength of their illusion would draw
Macbeth to confusion. Such, Hecate declared, would be his doom for
spurning fate, scorning death, and bearing his hopes above wisdom,
grace, and fear.

The three witches met in a dark cave, and, while the thunder rolled
without, they boiled a cauldron of hellish soup, the ingredients of
which may be gathered from the following lines:--

1 _Witch_. "Thrice the brindled cat hath mew'd.

2 _Witch_. Thrice; and once the hedge-pig whined.

3 _Witch_. Harper cries: 'Tis time, 'tis time.

1 _Witch_. Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.--
Toad, that under coldest 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, cauldron, bubble.

2 _Witch_. Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron