Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/343

[ 327 ] Again, the Hecate of Shakepeare ays to her iters:— “ I’ll charm the air to give a ound, “ While you perform your antique round, &c. [Muick. The witches dance and vanih.” The Hecate of Middleton ays on a imilar occaion: “ Come, my weete iters, let the aire trike our tune, “ Whilt we hew reverence to yond peeping moone. [Here they dance and Exeunt.” In this play, the motives which incline the witches to michief, their manners, the contents of their cauldron, &c. eem to have more than accidental reemblance to the ame particulars in Macbeth. The hags of Middleton, like the weird iters of Shakepeare, detroy cattle becaue they have been refued proviions at farm houes. The owl and the cat (Gray Malkin) give them notice when it is time to proceed on their everal expeditions.—Thus Shakepeare’s Witch:— “ Harper cries;—’tis time, ’tis time,” Thus too the Hecate of Middleton: “ Hec.] Heard you the owle yet? “ Stad.] Briefely in the copps. “ Hec.] ’Tis high time for us then.” The Hecate of Shakepeare, addreSS undefineding her iters, oberves, that Macbeth is but a wayward on, who loves for his own ends, not for them. The Hecate of Middleton has the ame obervation, when the youth who has been conulting her, retires: “ I know he loves me not, nor there’s no hope on’t.” Intead of the grease that’s weaten from the murderer’s gibbet, and the finger of birth-trangled babe, the witches of Middleton employ “ the gritle of a man that hangs after unet,” (i. e. of a murderer, for all other criminals were anciently cut down before evening) and the “ fat of an unbaptized child.” They likewie boat of the power to raie tempets that hall blow down trees, overthrow buildings, and occaion hipwreck; and, more particularly, that they can “ make miles of woods walk.” Here too the Grecian Hecate is degraded into a preiding witch, and exercied in upertitions peculiar to our own country. So much, for the cenes of enchantment; but even other parts of Middleton’s play coincide more than once with that of Shakepeare. Lady Macbeth ays, in act II: “ the urfeited grooms “ Do mock their charge with nores. I have drugg’d their poSS undefinedets.” So too Francica in the piece of Middleton: length in The Witch, while only the two firt words of them are printed in Macbeth, favour the uppoition that Middle- Vol. I.