Cauldron Bubble

Macbeth’s “eye of newt and toe of frog” is the most famous recipe for witches’ brew (see The Big Book of Monsters, p. 147), but Shakespeare’s contemporaries came up with others. This is from Thomas Middleton’s play The Witch (ca. 1616):

1st Witch: Here’s the blood of a bat.
Hecate: Put in that, oh, put in that.
2nd Witch: Here’s libbard’s bane.
Hecate: Put in again.
1st Witch: The juice of toad, the oil of adder.
2nd Witch: Those will make the younker madder.
Hecate: Put in; there’s all, and rid th...