The line is missing commas. It should read, "Witches' mummy, maw, and gulf." (Macbeth, 4.1.24). The line references the ingredients that the witches are adding to the pot in which they are making a rather gruesome potion for Macbeth. The "mummy," refers to mummia, an ingredient like glue used to preserve mummies. "Maw" is an opening through which food is taken. Here it refers to the opening of the stomach, "gulf." It is thought that Shakespeare created these horrible mixtures as a caraicature of Scottish cooking, particularly the delicacy, haggis. Haggis is a sheep or goat stomach stuffed with oatmeal and organ meats and then boiled.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
In Act III, scene 2, why may the establishment of Claudius's guilt be considered the crisis of the revenge plot?
The crisis of a drama usually proceeds and leads to the climax. In Shakespeare's Hamlet , the proof that Claudius is guilty...
-
In Chapter XXIV, entitled "Drawn to the Loadstone Rock," Charles Dickens alludes to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel T...
-
In Macbeth , men are at the top of the Great Chain of Being, women at the bottom. Here's the order at the beginning of the ...
-
The main association between the setting in Act 5 and the predictions in Act 4 is that in Act 4 the withches predict that Macbeth will not d...
No comments:
Post a Comment