Eye of newt, and toe of frog, / Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, / Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, / Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing, / For a charm of powerful trouble, / Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Act IV, Scene 1 · The Three Witches
Context
The Second Witch lists the grotesque animal parts being added to the cauldron as part of the spell the witches are brewing.
Analysis
Shakespeare catalogs body parts in strict, metrically even pairs ('Eye of newt, and toe of frog'), a structure that makes the grotesque feel orderly and deliberate rather than chaotic. This controlled listing reads like a dark parody of a recipe or scientific procedure, suggesting the witches' magic follows its own perverse logic—it is methodical evil, not random madness.
Essay Tip
Support a thesis that the witches represent a disciplined, systematic form of evil—their careful recipe structure shows that the supernatural in Macbeth operates by rules, which makes it more dangerous because Macbeth can try to bargain with it (and fail).