Note 547 — SCENE III.
Reading edition
Song above.]
Come away, come away, &c.
. . . . . . . . .
Or cannon’s throat our height can reach]
In act iii. sc. 5 of Davenant’s alteration of Macbeth, this passage is inserted, with some variations. It is so highly fanciful, and comes in so happily where Davenant has placed it (viz. immediately after these lines of the original Macbeth—
“Song [within]. Come away, come away, &c.
Hecate. Hark, I am call’d; my little spirit, see,
Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me.”)
that one is almost tempted to believe it was written by Shakespeare, and had been omitted in the printed copies of his play. Till the MS. of The Witch was discovered, towards the end of the last century, the passage in question was of course supposed to be the composition of Davenant.