Act 3, Scene 5

The heath.

[Thunder. Enter the three Witches, meeting Hecate.]
First Witch
1329 Why, how now, Hecate? you look angerly.
Hecate
1330 Have I not reason, beldams as you are,
1331 Saucy and overbold? How did you dare
1332 To trade and traffic with Macbeth
1333 In riddles and affairs of death;
1334 And I, the mistress of your charms,
1335 The close contriver of all harms,
1336 Was never call'd to bear my part,
1337 Or show the glory of our art?
1338 And, which is worse, all you have done
1339 Hath been but for a wayward son,
1340 Spiteful and wrathful; who, as others do,
1341 Loves for his own ends, not for you.
1342 But make amends now: get you gone,
1343 And at the pit of Acheron
1344 Meet me i' the morning: thither he
1345 Will come to know his destiny.
1346 Your vessels and your spells provide,
1347 Your charms, and everything beside.
1348 I am for the air; this night I'll spend
1349 Unto a dismal and a fatal end.
1350 Great business must be wrought ere noon:
1351 Upon the corner of the moon
1352 There hangs a vaporous drop profound;
1353 I'll catch it ere it come to ground:
1354 And that, distill'd by magic sleights,
1355 Shall raise such artificial sprites,
1356 As, by the strength of their illusion,
1357 Shall draw him on to his confusion:
1358 He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
1359 His hopes 'bove wisdom, grace, and fear:
1360 And you all know, security
1361 Is mortals' chiefest enemy.
[Music and song within, "Come away, come away" &c.]
Hecate
1362 Hark! I am call'd; my little spirit, see,
1363 Sits in a foggy cloud and stays for me.
[Exit.]
First Witch
1364 Come, let's make haste; she'll soon be back again.
[Exeunt.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1330archaic vocab
“beldams as you are”
'Beldams' is a contemptuous term for old women, especially ugly or frightening ones; derived from Old French 'bele dame' (fine lady), the word had come to mean the opposite by Shakespeare's time. Hecate flings it at the three witches as an insult, dismissing them as presumptuous hags who acted without her authority.
TLN 1343classical allusion
“pit of Acheron”
Acheron was one of the rivers of the classical underworld, associated with pain and lamentation; by extension 'the pit of Acheron' names a mouth or entrance to Hell itself. Hecate orders the witches to meet her there — linking their gathering place with the classical realm of the dead.
classical Triple Hecate
TLN 1352cultural context
“vaporous drop profound”
Hecate describes catching a moonbeam distilled into a liquid drop — a 'profound' (deep, potent) vapour from the moon's corner — which, once magically refined, will produce 'artificial sprites': conjured illusions capable of luring Macbeth to his ruin. The moon was widely associated in Renaissance witch-lore with the gathering of magical dew and the drawing-down of lunar power for spells.
classical Triple Hecatehistorical The weird sisters and Jacobean witchcraft
TLN 1360archaic vocab
“security / Is mortals' chiefest enemy”
'Security' here does not mean safety; it means overconfidence, careless self-assurance, or the failure to keep watch — a false feeling that one is beyond danger. Hecate names it as the most lethal trap she can set for Macbeth: she will not frighten him but will make him feel invulnerable, and that complacency will undo him.