Hecate’s cave
Enter Hecate and other witches with properties and habits fitting.
HECATE
Titty and Tiffin, Suckin and Pidgen, Liard and Robin,
White spirits, black spirits, grey spirits, red spirits,
Devil-toad, devil-ram, devil-cat, and devil-dam!
Why, Hoppo and Stadlin, Hellw[a]in and [Puckle]!
STADLIN
[Within] Here, sweating at the vessel.
HECATE
Boil it well.
HOPPO
[Within] It gallops now.
HECATE
Are the flames blue enough,
Or shall I use a little [seething] more?
STADLIN
[Within] The nips of fairies upon maid’s white hips
Are not more perfect azure.
HECATE
Tend it carefully.
Send Stadlin to me with a brazen dish
That I may fall to work upon these serpents
And squeeze ‘em ready for the second hour.
Why, when?
[Enter Stadlin with a dish.]
STADLIN
Here’s Stadlin and the dish.
HECATE
[Giving her a dead child’s body] Here, take this unbaptised brat.
Boil it well, preserve the fat:
You know ’tis precious to transfer
Our ‘nointed flesh into the air
In moonlight nights [o’er] steeple tops,
Mountains and pine trees, that like pricks or stops
Seem to our height; high towers and roofs of princes
Like wrinkles in the earth: whole provinces
Appear to our sight then ev’n leek
A russet mole upon some lady’s cheek.
When hundred leagues in air, we feast, and sing.
Dance, kiss, and coll, use everything.
What young man can we wish to pleasure us
But we enjoy him in an incubus?
Thou know’st it, Stadlin?
STADLIN
Usually that’s done.
HECATE
Last night thou got’st the Major of [Whelplie’s] son;
I knew him by his black cloak, lin’d with yallow.
I think thou’st spoil’d the youth: he’s but seventeen;
I’ll have him the next mounting. Away, in;
Go feed the vessel for the second hour.
STADLIN
Where be the magic herbs?
HECATE
They’re down his throat:
His mouth cramm’d full, his ears and nostrils stuff’d.
I thrust in eleoselinum lately
Aconitum, frondes populeas, and soot —
You may see that, he looks so back i’ th’ mouth —
Then sium, acorum vulgare too,
[Pentaphyllon], the blood of a flitter-mouse,
Solanum somnificum et oleum.
STADLIN
Then there’s all, Hecate?
HECATE
Is the heart of wax
Stuck full of magic needles?
STADLIN
’Tis done, Hecate.
HECATE
And is the farmer’s picture, and his wife’s,
Laid down to th’ fire yet?
STADLIN
They’re a-roasting both, too.
HECATE
Good.
[Exit Stadlin.]
Then their marrows are a-melting subtly,
And three months’ sickness sucks up life in ‘em.
They denied me often flour, barm, and milk,
Goose-grease, and tar, when I ne’er hurt their [churnings],
Their brew locks, nor their batches, nor forspoke
Any of their breedings. Now I’ll be meet with ‘em.
Seven of their young pigs I have bewitch’d already
Of their last litter,
Nine ducklings, thirteen goslings, and a hog
Fell lame last Sunday after Evensong, too.
And mark how their sheep prosper, or what sup
Each milch-kine gives to th’ pail. I’ll send those snakes
Shall milk ‘em all beforehand:
The [dew]-skirted dairy wenches
Shall stroke dry dugs for this, and go home cursing.
I’ll mar their sillabubs and frothy feastings
Under cows’ bellies with the parish youths.
Where’s Firestone? Our son Firestone?
Enter Firestone.
FIRESTONE
Here I am, mother.
HECATE
Take in this brazen dish full of dear ware,
Thou shalt have all when I die; and that will be
Ev’n just at twelve a’clock at night, come three year.
FIRESTONE
And may you not have one a’clock in to th’ dozen, mother?
HECATE
No.
FIRESTONE
Your spirits are then more unconscionable than bakers. You’ll have liv’d then, mother, sixscore year to the hundred; and methinks after sixscore years, the devil might give you a cast, for he’s a fruiterer too, and has been from the beginning. The first apple that e’er was eaten came through his fingers: the costermonger’s then I hold to be the ancientest trade, though some would have the tailor prick’d down before him.
HECATE
Go, and take heed you shed not by the way.
The hour must have her portion: ’tis dear syrup;
Each charmed drop is able to confound
A family consisting of nineteen,
Or one and twenty feeders.
FIRESTONE
Marry, here’s stuff indeed!
Dear syrup call you it? [Aside] A little thing
Would make me give you a dram on’t in a posset
And cut you three years shorter.
HECATE
Thou’rt now
About some villainy?
FIRESTONE
Not I, forsooth.
[Aside] Truly the devil’s in her, I think. How one villain smells out another straight! There’s no knavery but is nos’d like a dog, and can smell out a dog’s meaning. — Mother, I pray give me leave to ramble abroad tonight with the night-mare, for I have a great mind to overlay a fat parson’s daughter.
HECATE
And who shall lie with me then?
FIRESTONE
The great cat.
For one night, mother, ’tis but a night;
Make shift with him for once.
HECATE
You’re a kind son,
But ’tis the nature of you all, I see that:
You had rather hunt after strange women still
Than lie with your own mothers. Get thee gone,
Sweat thy six ounces out about the vessel
And thou shalt play at midnight; the night-mare
Shall call thee when it walks.
FIRESTONE
Thanks, most sweet mother.
Exit. Enter Sebastian.
HECATE
Urchins, elves, hags, satyrs, pans, fawns, [silens], kit with the candlestick, tritons, centaurs, dwarfs, imps, the spoorn, the mare, the man i’ th’ oak, the hellwain, the firedrake, the puckle! A ab hur hus!
SEBASTIAN
[Aside] Heaven knows with what unwillingness and hate
I enter this damn’d place. But such extremes
Of wrongs in love fight ‘gainst religious knowledge,
That were I led by this disease to deaths
As numberless as creatures that must die,
I could not shun the way. I know what ’tis
To pity madmen now; they’re wretched things
That ever were created, if they be
Of woman’s making and her faithless vows.
I fear they’re now a-kissing. What’s a’clock?
’Tis now but suppertime, but night will come,
And all new-married couples make short suppers. —
Whate’er thou art, I have no spare time to fear thee;
My horrors are so strong and great already
That thou seem’st nothing. Up and laze not;
Hadst thou my business, thou couldst ne’er sit so:
’Twould firk thee into air a thousand mile
Beyond thy ointments. I would I were read
So much in thy black power [as] mine own griefs.
I’m in great need of help: wilt give me any?
HECATE
Thy boldness takes me bravely. We are all sworn
To sweat for such a spirit. See, I regard thee;
I rise and bid thee welcome. What’s thy wish now?
SEBASTIAN
Oh, my heart swells with’t! I must take breath first.
HECATE
Is’t to confound some enemy on the seas?
It may be done tonight. Stadlin’s within;
She raises all your sudden ruinous storms
That shipwrack barks and tears up growing oaks,
Flies over houses and takes Anno Domini
Out of a rich man’s chimney — a sweet place for’t!
He would be hang’d ere he would set his own years there;
They must be chamber’d in a five-pound picture,
A green silk curtain drawn before the eyes on’t.
His rotten, diseas’d years! Or dost thou envy
The fat prosperity of any neighbour?
I’ll call forth Hoppo, and her incantation
Can straight destroy the young of all his cattle,
Blast vineyards, orchards, meadows, or in one night
Transport his dung, hay, corn by reeks, whole stacks,
Into thine own ground.
SEBASTIAN
This would come most richly now
To many a country grazier. But my envy
Lies not so low as cattle, corn, or vines:
‘Twill trouble your best powers to give me ease.
HECATE
Is it to starve up generation?
To strike a barrenness in man or woman?
SEBASTIAN
Hah?
HECATE
Hah? Did you feel me there? I knew your grief.
SEBASTIAN
Can there be such things done?
HECATE
Are these the skins
Of serpents? These of snakes?
SEBASTIAN
I see they are.
HECATE
[Giving him skins] So sure into what house these are convey’d,
Knit with these charmed and retentive knots,
Neither the man begets nor woman breeds;
No, nor performs the least desires of wedlock,
Being then a mutual duty. I could give thee
Chirocineta, adincantida,
Archimedon, marmaritin, calicia,
Which I could sort to villainous, barren ends,
But this leads the same way. More I could instance,
As the same needles thrust into their pillows
That sews and socks up dead men in their sheets,
A privy gristle of a man that hangs
After sunset. Good, excellent; yet all’s there, sir.
SEBASTIAN
You could not do a man that special kindness
To part ‘em utterly now? Could you do that?
HECATE
No, time must do’t. We cannot disjoin wedlock:
’Tis of heaven’s fast’ning; well may we raise jars,
Jealousies, strifes, and heart-burning disagreements,
Like a thick scurf o’er life, as did our master
Upon that patient miracle, but the work itself
Our power cannot disjoint.
SEBASTIAN
I depart happy
In what I have then, being constrained to this.
[Aside] And grant, you greater powers that dispose men,
That I may never need this hag again.
Exit.
HECATE
I know he loves me not, nor there’s no hope on’t;
’Tis for the love of mischief I do this,
And that we’re sworn to, the first oath we take.
[Enter Firestone.]
FIRESTONE
Oh mother, mother!
HECATE
What the news with thee now?
FIRESTONE
There’s the bravest young gentleman within, and the fineliest drunk; I thought he would have fall’n into the vessel. He stumbled at a pipkin of child’s grease, reel’d against Stadlin, overthrew her, and in the tumbling cast, struck up old Puckle’s heels with her clothes over her ears.
HECATE
Hoyday!
FIRESTONE
I was fain to throw the cat upon her to save her honesty, and all little enough: I cried out still, “I pray be covered!” See where he comes now, mother.
Enter Almachildes.
ALMACHILDES
Call you these witches?
They be tumblers, methinks, very flat tumblers.
HECATE
[Aside] ’Tis Almachildes: fresh blood stirs in me,
The man that I have lusted to enjoy;
I have had him thrice in incubus already.
ALMACHILDES
Is your name Goody Hag?
HECATE
’Tis anything.
Call me the horrid’st and unhallowed’st things
That life and nature trembles at, for thee
I’ll be the same. Thou com’st for a love charm now?
ALMACHILDES
Why, thou’rt a witch, I think.
HECATE
Thou shalt have a choice
Of twenty, wet or dry.
ALMACHILDES
Nay, let’s have dry ones.
HECATE
If thou wilt use’t by way of cup and potion,
I’ll give thee a remora shall bewitch her straight.
ALMACHILDES
A remora? What’s that?
HECATE
A little suck-stone;
Some call it a [sea]-lamprey, a small fish.
ALMACHILDES
And must be butter’d?
HECATE
The bones of a green frog, too, wondrous precious,
The flesh consumed by pismires.
ALMACHILDES
Pismires? Give me a chamberpot.
FIRESTONE
[Aside] You shall see him go nigh to be so unmannerly, he’ll make water before my mother anon.
ALMACHILDES
And now you talk of frogs, I have somewhat here;
I come not empty-pocketed from a banquet.
I learn’d that of my haberdasher’s wife.
Look, Goody Witch, there’s a toad in marchpane for you.
[Gives her marchpane.]
HECATE
Oh sir, you have fitted me.
ALMACHILDES
And here’s a spawn or two
Of the same paddock brood, too, for your son.
[Gives him marchpane.]
FIRESTONE
I thank your worship, sir; how comes your handkercher so sweetly thus beray’d? Sure ’tis wet sucket, sir.
ALMACHILDES
’Tis nothing but the syrup the toad spit.
Take all, I prithee.
HECATE
That was kindly done, sir;
And you shall sup with me tonight for this.
ALMACHILDES
How? Sup with thee? Dost think I’ll eat fried rats
And pickled spiders?
HECATE
No, I can command, sir,
The best meat i’ th’ whole province for my friends,
And reverently serv’d in, too.
ALMACHILDES
How?
HECATE
In good fashion.
ALMACHILDES
Let me but see that, and I’ll sup with you.
She conjures; and enter a cat playing on a fiddle and spirits with meat.
The cat and fiddle? An excellent ordinary.
You had a devil once, in a fox skin?
HECATE
Oh, I have him still. Come, walk with me, sir.
Exeunt [all but Firestone].
FIRESTONE
How apt and ready is a drunkard now to reel to the devil! Well, I’ll even in and see how he eats, and I’ll be hang’d if I be not the fatter of the twain with laughing at him.
Exit.