Compare these two excerpts. What is Shakespeare trying to say?
A dark cave. In the middle, a cauldron boiling.
[Thunder. Enter the three Witches.]
Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.
Thrice; and once the hedge-pig whin'd.
Harpier cries: "'tis time, 'tis time".
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!
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble.
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 howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble.
Dunsinane. A Room in the Castle.
[Enter a Doctor of physic and a waiting Gentlewoman.]
What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.
It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands: I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour.
Yet here's a spot.
Hark, she speaks: I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.
Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One; two; why, then 'tis time to do't -- Hell is murky! -- Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
Do you mark that?
The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now? What, will these hands ne'er be clean? No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting.
Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.