Thunder. Enter the three Witches

FIRST WITCH            Where hast thou been, sister?

SECOND WITCH        Killing swine.

THIRD WITCH           Sister, where thou?

FIRST WITCH            A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap,

And munched, and munched, and munched. ‘Give me!’ quoth I.

‘Aroint thee, witch!’ the rump-fed runnion cries.

Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ th’ Tiger;

But in a sieve I’ll thither sail,

And, like a rat without a tail,

I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.        (1.3.1-8)

BANG! Witches, again. More thunder, and more lightning? More gunpowder, hanging in the air, and in the nose? I hope so. Foul and filthy air. Where do they enter from? The King and his attendants have perhaps exited through one door, and Ross through another, to see Cawdor’s execution carried out—so do the witches enter from the central entrance at the back of the stage? Do they, perhaps, emerge from the trap? The implication of their first exchange is that they don’t all come from the same direction. But what does it matter, perhaps, they’re WITCHES, they can be anywhere, anytime; it’s just that at this moment, we can see them again. What they’ve been doing is the point. Killing swine, says one, casually, laconically, almost the archetypal crime of the witch: the pig as the most crucial annual investment of a poor family, its death a catastrophic loss, for which an ‘outsider’ neighbour might readily be blamed. (It’s left suggestively unclear as to whether the swine—plural?—have been killed by magic, made to drop dead, or slaughtered: does the second witch matter-of-fact-ly wave her bloody hands?) The first wife has more of a sense of story, of drama, as she sets the scene for her own mischief and malevolence. She asked for food, for charity, and was refused it, another classic encounter with a witch. A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap, in her lap because they’re still hot from the fire. She munched, and munched, and munched, peeling the hot chestnuts, eating them one by one, onomatopoeically. Give me! Give us one? A request or an order? Aroint, thee, witch—the sailor’s wife knows what’s going on, and she’s not sharing; she’s hungry too, and with husband at sea, things are scarce. (These aren’t Christmas chestnuts roasting on an open fire, this is subsistence.) Avaunt thee, be off with you, or, less archaically, bugger off (more like something stronger, in a strong Glaswegian accent). That lard-arsed bitch. I’ve got her number. And it’s the specifics which chill: no names, but the witch knows who this woman’s husband is, what his job is, and where he’s gone. He’s a ship’s captain, on a dangerous voyage (there were plenty of ships called the Tiger, but the name suggests a certain savagery; so might Aleppo, not just foreign and far away, but the preserve of Turks, of infidels). I’ll go after him in a sieve—this is what witches sail in—and like a rat without a tail (uncanny, although there is apparently witchlore to suggest that when witches transform into rats they are tailless rats) I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do. Do harm. There might be gestures here, stabbing, punching, twisting. All for chestnuts. And for the hell of it.