Page 43 - Macbeth Modern Translation

The cave fills with stange creatures. They form an eerie choir which sings until
one of the sisters shreiks, and they all scatter.

‘By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes!’

Macbeth stood at the entrance to the cave, bewildered as to how he had
come to be there. He could make out the dark shapes of the sisters against
he dull light of the coals beneath the cauldron.

‘What are you up to, you secret black and midnight hags?’ he said.

‘A deed without a name,’ they said in unison.

‘I call on you in the name of the evil magic you profess,’ he said. ‘I don’t care
how you come by this dark knowledge you have, I just want some answers.
Even if the Devil himself gives you your powers, answer my questions.’

‘Speak.’

‘Demand.’

‘We’ll answer.’

‘Say, if thou’dst rather hear it from our mouths, Or from our masters.’

‘Call them, let me see them.’

Two of them swooped on him and held him down while the other plunged
her hand into the foaming cauldron and pulled out a ladle. As she stirred she
poured some liquid from a flask.

‘Pour in sow’s blood, that bath eaten
Her nine farrow, grease, that’s sweaten
From the murderer’s gibbet, throw

Into the flame.’

She filled the ladle and advanced on Macbeth. She placed the ladle against
his lips. The other two squeezed his nose and held his mouth open. He kicked
and squirmed as the foul liquid trickled down his throat, but they were strong
and he was unable to stop them.

He felt sick. His head ached. The weird sisters had disappeared and he
seemed to be in a featureless place lit with a bland grey light.

A head wearing a helmet hung in the air before him. ‘Tell me, stange
creature Macbeth began.

‘He knows thy thought,’ a witch’s voice said. ‘Hear his speech, but say thou
naught.’

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