18–25 Scot 12.7 translates: ‘The rivers I can make retire, / Into the fountains whence they flow, / (Whereat the banks themselves admire) /1 can make standing water go, / With charms I drive both sea and cloud, /1 make it calm and blow aloud. / The vipers’ jaws, the rocky stone, / With words and charms I break in twain / The force of earth congealed in one, /1 move and shake both woods and plain; / I make the souls of men arise, /1 pull the moon out of the skies’. Scot also quotes 1. 22 in 12.15. Dyce points out that Middleton copied his Ovid (Metamorphoses 7. 199–207) from Bodinus, De Magorum Daemonomania (1590) 2.2, p. 130, because, like Bodinus, he missed out a line (which would be after 1. 22 here): ‘Vivaque saxa sua convulsaque robora terra’ (‘the rocky stone … The force of earth congealed in one’).

28 marbles tombs

29 involved convoluted, entangled

31 French Cf. III.iii.61–2.

38 howlet owlet

43 semina, cum sanguine seed with blood

48 conscionable reasonable

49 Scot 6.7 mentions lizard’s brain as a love charm.

50 Grannam grandmother

51 s.d. Hecate’s ’five sisters’ of 1. 37 suggests that an extra witch is needed for this scene.

52 marmaritin See I.ii. 160–1.

bear-breech brank-ursine, herbaceous plant

When? i.e. hurry up, when will you do this?

55 red-haired girl Red hair was supposed to indicate potential for evil; in Renaissance imagery Judas Iscariot had red hair.

57 acopus a soothing salve but in Pliny (see Dyce) a plant or a stone

60–73 These lines are used also in Macbeth (IV.i.43).

60–4 Cf. charm at I.ii.l–5.

64 Liard ed. (Liand MS)

67–72 s.h. Stadlin … Hoppo ed. (Witch 1 … Witch 2 MS) Any of the witches on stage can take these lines, but Stadlin and Hoppo seem an obvious choice because they are speaking parts elsewhere. The MS lay-out and the rhyming of the lines suggest that these lines are all meant to be sung.

69 libbard’s bane ‘leopard’s poison’, a poisonous plant. Davenant has ‘lizard’s brain’, which is plausible.

70 a grain Davenant (againe MS)

72 younker fashionable young man

75 ed. (all Round: around: around &c:/ . MS)

82 burden accompaniment or refrain

84 s.d. See Introduction, p. xxv, for a description of the witches’ dance in Masque of Queens.

[Act V,] Scene iii

0 Scene iii ed. (Scea.4a MS)

0 s.d. MS includes an entrance for Hermio and an erased entrance for Antonio.

Francisca and Aberzanes make no contribution to the scene.

3 this woman Florida

12 intelligence communication of knowledge

16–17 her … her … her Isabella … Florida … Isabella

26 his Antonio’s

30 depth See Introduction, p. xxiii, for the allegorical, infernal aspect of Antonio’s death.

32 fathom length of six feet

38 light morally

41 passion passionate grief

44 age i.e. now Isabella is a widow, it is an appropriate time/age for Sebastian to reveal his identity and claim her

47 Sebastian is relieved that being a servant to Isabella has not rendered him unrecognisable to her or placed him socially beyond the pale. There is also play on the meaning of ‘serving in love’.

51 two… more mouth-shaped wounds

54 Ravenna ed. (Vrbin MS)

56 beneath myself beneath his rank, as a servant