h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Went to see Macbeth a few weeks ago and mt friend thought hubble bubble toil and trouble came from that play.
They didn't say that line if it does come from macbeth.
I thought it was off some disney/kids film.

I looked in the oxf dictionary of quotations and couldn't find it.

If anyone does know where that saying came from please let me know as little things like that really bug me!

Sean Bean was very good as Macbeth!

Going off subject now into my own little dream world.
Bye
Luv Haz

I think... (and it's a long time since I did Macbeth at school) that the original line is 'double double toil and trouble', and it is from Macbeth. In the production you saw, they may have decided to cut it because it's too well known and a bit cheesy!

Hubble bubble etc is a misquote from Macbeth. I can't remember the correct words.

'Double, double, toil and trouble.
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.'

I don't have a copy of the play in front of me, but I think it's at the start of act II. It is just before the Witches meet Macbeth for the second time, and tell him about not being killed by any man 'born of woman' or before 'Birnan wood comes to Dunsinane'.
I did Macbeth for my GCSE English Lit, and got the best marks I got for any section.

Macbeth Act IV Sc 1 to fill in the gap!

Double Double toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble!

Modern directors often mess around with Shakespeare like that, leaving out the cliched bits.

The words are:

"Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron buble."

The lines are spoken three times by all three witches around a cauldron at the start of Act IV, Scene I - the 'Eye of newt and toe of frog' scene. I can't imagine the scene being right without these lines.

I too did Macbeth at school (a long, long time ago). Isn't it from the opening scene of Act 1?

The full quote is here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/10/1028_021028_HalloweenMacbeth.html

The opening of Act I is "When shall we three meet again"... isn't it? Like I said, looong time ago

Well done, Stephen and Cheerful.

Act I Scene I is the 'Where shall we three meet again? / In thunder, lightning, or in rain? /When the hurly burly's done, / when the battle's lost and won." bit.

I've just seen a review of the Sean Bean play, which said that the 'Eye of newt' scene was cut. So, no, you won't have heard those lines. Definitely a case of modern directors mucking about and cutting things to suit themselves.

It all started with the Hecate scene. Yes, it's not essential to the plot, and yes it is a different style to the rest of the play. There are even rumours that Shakespeare didn't even write it. If you cut it out, though, you can cut anything...
Where's this play on?

Aha... I had a lecture on this yesterday...

It is in Macbeth, and apparently it's an example of trochaic tetrameter (there are four stresses in each line), and this radical difference in construction is one of the reasons why people think someone else wrote it.

You really wanted to know that, didn't you?

Em, English student with much time on her hands (only she should be writing an essay)

Of course you can cut anything. Shakespeare's plays are pretty long and most people don't want to sit in a theatre for over four hours, so practically all productions of Shakespeare's plays are cut.

As for 'modern directors'...Laurence Olivier not only cut Hamlet radically for film, he also messed around with the chronology and the plot.

Nevertheless, it's a bit disappointing that this production couldn't bring itself to attempt to render the ol' Double-Double-ing in an original, exciting, and up-to-the-minute fashion.

Coulda done it as a rap, maybe.

Gubernatrix

I could imagine a rap version of that scene as one of those almost-but-not-quites that are so remarkably embarassing.

Not if you did a gangland Macbeth set in Compton, LA

I think somebody's already done something remarkably like that.

Wouldn't surprise me. It's the sort of thing that 'trendy' English teachers would encourage their sixth-formers to do for the end-of-term play.

*thinks that might sound disparaging...*

In fact, a lot of Shakespeare's plays are about gang warfare in one way or another. It's just that the gangs in question tend to be aristocrats. And when they're not about gang warfare, they're about dysfunctional families.

Eminem --> Hamlet

My old drama teacher was a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and his first production when he arrived at the school was Macbeth. I think it was meant to be set in some South American disputed territory, and the whole fo the first few scenes saw the actors in combat jackets.
Mr Scammel took his plays _very_ seriously.