HECATE But make amends now. Get you gone,
And at the pit of Acheron
Meet me i’th’ morning. Thither he
Will come to know his destiny.
Your vessels and your spells provide,
Your charms, and everything beside.
I am for th’air. This night I’ll spend
Unto a dismal and a fatal end.
Great business must be wrought ere noon. (3.5.14-22)
Hecate doesn’t stay angry long, or at least offers the three witches the chance to put things right, get back in her good books: but make amends now. Get you gone, and at the pit of Acheron meet me i’th’ morning. The pit of Acheron, the latter being one of the seven rivers of Hades, the classical underworld, jars slightly in this rather English (not even Scottish) witchy idiom; it’s a bit self-conscious, although obviously it’s an excellent rhyme for get you gone. (Hecate and these witches just don’t seem particularly infernal; with this text, it’s hard to see how they could become so. Maybe the pit of Acheron is in fact a local café with a special senior citizen deal on coffee and a scone, weekdays before 11.)
It is, however, as happens so often in this play, also being established that it’s night, yet again, because this next rendezvous is going to take place in the morning. This encounter between Hecate and the witches is happening immediately after the banquet scene, or perhaps, in the imagined time-scheme of the play, even overlapping with it. And, even more seriously, it’s already known that Macbeth is coming to visit the witches again; he will come to know his destiny. That makes it serious, for all my facetiousness. The witches must prepare, with their vessels and their spells, everything ready that they need to make their charms, and everything beside. All the ingredients, all their tools. I am for th’air, Hecate makes clear—so she’s not going to be at the rendezvous with Macbeth (Middleton isn’t going to interpolate her into an existing scene). She may well have ‘flown’ off originally, which would probably necessitate music and sound effects to cover the noise of the flying machinery, winching her back up into the trap over the stage. But Hecate also has a particular scheme immediately in hand, which she’s about to reveal, which will be directed unto a dismal and a fatal end. Great business must be wrought ere noon. This is going to be big. For all the potential silliness of the witches here, and surely the impossibility of ever getting Hecate right, there is a proper sense of ominousness and foreboding, increased by the time pressure: ere noon. Macbeth may be plotting, but so are the witches.
