[197] In parts of this paragraph I am indebted to Hunter's Illustrations of Shakespeare.
[198] The line is a foot short.
[199] It should be observed that in some cases the irony would escape an audience ignorant of the story and watching the play for the first time,—another indication that Shakespeare did not write solely for immediate stage purposes.
[200] Their influence on spectators is, I believe, very inferior. These scenes, like the Storm-scenes in King Lear, belong properly to the world of imagination.
[201] 'By yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed: I like not when a 'oman has a great peard' (Merry Wives, iv. ii. 202).
[202] Even the metaphor in the lines (ii. iii. 127),
What should be spoken here, where our fate,
Hid in an auger-hole, may rush and seize us?
was probably suggested by the words in Scot's first chapter, 'They can go in and out at awger-holes.'
[203] Once, 'weird women.' Whether Shakespeare knew that 'weird' signified 'fate' we cannot tell, but it is probable that he did. The word occurs six times in Macbeth (it does not occur elsewhere in Shakespeare). The first three times it is spelt in the Folio weyward, the last three weyard. This may suggest a miswriting or misprinting of wayward; but, as that word is always spelt in the Folio either rightly or waiward, it is more likely that the weyward and weyard of Macbeth are the copyist's or printer's misreading of Shakespeare's weird or weyrd.
[204] The doubt as to these passages (see [Note Z]) does not arise from the mere appearance of this figure. The idea of Hecate's connection with witches appears also at ii. i. 52, and she is mentioned again at iii. ii. 41 (cf. Mid. Night's Dream, v. i. 391, for her connection with fairies). It is part of the common traditional notion of the heathen gods being now devils. Scot refers to it several times. See the notes in the Clarendon Press edition on iii. v. 1, or those in Furness's Variorum.