128 rose’s ed. (Rose’ MS)

130 moving originating

132 it must you have (to drink)

This’s ed. (this’ MS)

133 great belly pregnant woman

134 come go into labour

139 since ever since

143 round the walk or circuit performed by the watch of a garrison as well as a drinking ‘round’

145 A boy tonight i.e. conceive a boy. Superstition and medical science supposed that it required more vital spirits and heat to beget a boy than a girl; hence the pun at 1. 146 on ‘industrious’.

147 tried soldier with a pun based on the parallel of military and amorous combat, meaning a man whose sexual prowess is proven

148 tossed pike brandished arms, i.e. served as a soldier (also sexual innuendo)

[Act I,] Scene ii

0 s.d. ed. (‘enter Heccat: & other witches: (with Properties, and Habbitts fitting.) MS) The ‘other witches’ who are tending the cauldron have to be off-stage for Almachildes to be reported (11. 183–8) as nearly tripping into it and for Hecate to send Stadlin ‘in’ to ‘feed’ the vessel (11. 36–7). Hecate must have the ‘dead baby’ with her at the beginning of the scene.

1–7 Ed. (Titty … Suckin / and … Robin / white … Speritts: / Deuill-Toad … Dam. / MS)

1–7 Titty … devil dam taken from Scot’s Discourse upon Devils and Spirits appended to Discovery of Witchcraft, ch. 33, p. 455. Cf. V.ii.60–4.

3 Liard balsam poplar

7 dam mother. Cf. Tilley D 225, ‘The Devil and his dam’.

8 Hellwain ed. (Hellwin MS)

Puckle ed. (Prickle MS)

10 gallops boils

blue This suggests unnatural happenings.

11 seeton not in OED; presumably a substance which produces blue flames. Dyce suggests ‘seething’.

12–13 Cf. Merry Wives of Windsor V.v.45–6. It was commonly believed that fairies pinched lazy maids.

18 unbaptised and so unprotected from the witches. See Scot 10.8, where the recipe for ‘witches’ transportations’ includes: ‘The fat of young children, and seethe it with water in a brazen vessel, reserving the thickest of that which remaineth boiled in the bottom.’ Cf. also Scot 3.1: ‘So as, if there be any children unbaptised, or not guarded with the sign of the cross, or orisons; then the witches may and do catch them from their mothers’ sides in the night, or out of their cradles, or otherwise kill them with their ceremonies; and after burial steal them out of their graves, and seethe them in a cauldron, until their flesh be made potable. Of the thickest whereof they make ointments, whereby they ride in the air’.

21 ’nointed anointed

22 o’er ed. (or MS)

23 pricks or stops dots, punctuation marks

26 leek obsolete form of like, for rhyme

29 coll embrace. See Scot 10.8: ‘By this means … in a moon light night they seem to be carried in the air, to feasting, singing, dancing, kissing, culling, and other acts of venery, with such youths as they love and desire most’.