Open Locks-Whoever Knocks

Welcome to my

100 Days Until Halloween

countdown.

For the next 100 Days I will be posting Halloween stories, poems and prompts-

and other little treats to count down the days to Halloween 2022.

Photo A.M. Moscoso

To kick off the big day here is a mind blowing interpretation of the Three Witches in Macbeth

Heads up- they’re not dancing around a caldron in this version.

First Witch

Round about the cauldron 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 cauldron bubble.

Second Witch

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron 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 cauldron bubble.

Third 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

Silver’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 chaudron,

For the ingredients of our cauldron.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch

Cool it with a baboon’s blood,

Then the charm is firm and good.

SECOND WITCH 
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks.

 

Gupta, SudipDas. “Double, Double Toil and Trouble from Macbeth”. Poem Analysis, https://poemanalysis.com/william-shakespeare/double-double-toil-and-trouble/. Accessed 24 March 2022.