The Closet Professor

Double, Double Toil and Trouble

From Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I

By William Shakespeare

The Three Witches, casting a spell

Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights hast 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.

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
Sliver’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.

    Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

---

About the Poem

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought it would be appropriate to turn to one of the most famous scenes of witchcraft in English literature. Few lines from Shakespeare are as instantly recognizable as “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.” Even people who have never read or seen Macbeth probably know those words. They have become so closely associated with witches, bubbling cauldrons, and Halloween that it is sometimes easy to forget their rather sinister origins.

I used to love teaching Macbeth. Along with Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it remains one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. I have always been fascinated by the supernatural elements of Macbeth, but what makes the play truly compelling is that the greatest evil does not necessarily come from the witches. It comes from human ambition, greed, jealousy, and the willingness to commit terrible acts in pursuit of power. The witches may plant the seeds of ambition in Macbeth’s mind, but he is the one who chooses to act upon them.

When I was teaching, I was also in charge of the Drama Club, and I was always looking for ways to make Shakespeare more entertaining and accessible to my students. At one point, I even wrote a play of my own that incorporated scenes from several of Shakespeare’s works.

The play was set in a college dorm room, much like the one in today’s picture. It began with a student struggling to complete an assignment for a Shakespeare class. The professor had asked the students to choose what they considered the greatest scene Shakespeare ever wrote and explain why. Of course, anyone who loves Shakespeare knows what an impossible assignment that would be.

As the student considered various possibilities, the scenes would come to life onstage. The actors would perform a scene, and then the student would explain why, despite its brilliance, it wasn’t quite the right choice. Today’s scene from Macbeth, with the Three Witches chanting around their cauldron, was one of those possibilities.

The play continued through several of Shakespeare’s most memorable scenes, with the student considering each one before deciding that it wasn’t quite the right choice. For the final scene, I chose Puck’s closing speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of my favorite passages in all of Shakespeare:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.

As Puck finished his speech, the student woke up, discovering that the entire ordeal had been nothing more than a dream. There was no impossible assignment, no need to choose the greatest scene Shakespeare ever wrote, and certainly no need to explain why all the other wonderful scenes weren’t quite good enough.

I thought it was a fitting ending. After all, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is itself a play about the strange boundary between dreams and reality. Having Puck assure the audience that everything they had witnessed might have been a dream, only for the student to awaken and discover that it actually was, seemed like the perfect way to bring the story full circle.

Whenever I taught Macbeth, I also liked to show students two very different film adaptations. The first was the 2010 production starring Patrick Stewart, which features some of the creepiest witches I have ever seen. Rather than the traditional old hags gathered around a cauldron, these witches appear as sinister nurses in a nightmarish world of violence and paranoia. Their unsettling appearance makes them all the more frightening.

The second was Scotland, PA (2001), a dark comedy that transports Shakespeare’s tragedy to a fast-food restaurant in 1970s Pennsylvania. Instead of three terrifying witches, we get three pot-smoking hippies, including one played by Andy Dick. They first appear on a Ferris wheel, offering their own rather unconventional version of supernatural wisdom. It’s a wonderfully absurd adaptation, but underneath the comedy, the familiar themes of ambition, murder, guilt, and fate remain.

One of the things I love most about Shakespeare is that his plays can be reimagined almost endlessly without losing their essential meaning. Whether the witches are terrifying supernatural creatures, sinister nurses, or three stoners on a Ferris wheel, their role remains much the same. They tempt Macbeth with the possibility of greatness while leaving him to make the choices that will ultimately destroy him.

Perhaps that is the most frightening thing about Macbeth. The witches do not have to force anyone to do evil. Sometimes all they have to do is tell us what we want to hear.

Commonly known as “The Witches’ Chant” or “Double, Double Toil and Trouble,” this passage comes from Act IV, Scene I of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, generally believed to have been written around 1606. The three witches, also known as the Weird Sisters, gather around a cauldron to prepare a magical potion before Macbeth arrives seeking further prophecies about his future.

The passage is remarkable for its rhythm, imagery, and theatricality. Unlike much of Shakespeare’s dramatic verse, which is written in iambic pentameter, the witches frequently speak in shorter, heavily accented rhyming lines. The repeated refrain creates an almost hypnotic rhythm, suggesting the chanting of a magical incantation. The grotesque ingredients, ranging from the eye of a newt to the finger of a murdered infant, heighten the sense of horror while giving the scene a darkly imaginative quality.

Some of the ingredients also reflect the prejudices and fears of Shakespeare’s time. References to Jews, Turks, and Tartars draw upon the religious and cultural hostility familiar to Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences. These lines remind us that literature can preserve not only the imagination of an earlier age but also its uglier assumptions.

The witches are especially interesting because of their connection to King James I. Before becoming king of England in 1603, James had ruled Scotland as James VI. He was deeply fascinated by witchcraft and believed witches posed a genuine threat to society. In 1597, he published Daemonologie, a treatise examining witchcraft, sorcery, and demonic activity.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth was probably written with James in mind. The king’s supposed ancestor, Banquo, appears in the play as a noble figure whose descendants are prophesied to become kings. Although modern historians generally regard Banquo as legendary rather than historical, the connection would have been particularly flattering to James.

There is also a fascinating scholarly debate about the witches themselves. While they are generally considered an essential part of Shakespeare’s original play, some scholars believe that portions of their scenes were added or revised later, possibly by the playwright Thomas Middleton. In particular, the scenes involving Hecate, the goddess associated with witchcraft, have long been suspected of being later additions. Similar songs appear in Middleton’s play The Witch. Whether these changes were made to enhance the supernatural spectacle or to satisfy changing theatrical tastes remains a matter of debate.

Whatever their origins, the witches have become among the most memorable characters in Shakespeare’s works. Their chant has survived for more than four centuries, finding its way into films, television, literature, and countless Halloween celebrations.

About the Poet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, he became a leading figure in London’s theatrical world during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I.

Shakespeare wrote approximately 39 plays, 154 sonnets, and several longer narrative poems. His works include tragedies such as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth; comedies such as Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and historical plays exploring the lives and reigns of English monarchs.

What makes Shakespeare so enduring is his extraordinary understanding of human nature. His characters struggle with love, jealousy, ambition, betrayal, grief, and the desire for power in ways that remain recognizable more than four hundred years later. His language can be beautiful, terrifying, humorous, or heartbreaking, sometimes within the same scene.

Macbeth is one of his shortest and darkest tragedies. Its exploration of ambition, guilt, fate, and moral corruption continues to resonate with audiences today. The witches may provide some of the play’s most memorable moments, but the true horror lies in Macbeth’s gradual destruction of his own humanity.

And perhaps that is why, centuries later, we are still captivated by three witches chanting around a bubbling cauldron.