“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes” is the chilling line from a rhyming couplet by William Shakespeare in his famous play “Macbeth,” that we whispered to each other along lit school corridors.
While we used it to warn of the imminent arrival of a much disliked disciplinarian teacher or an obnoxious official, in the play it is uttered by the second of the three witches in Act Four, Scene One of the early 17th-century tragedy, who also cackled, “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”
Dramatising the negative effects of ruthless political ambition by those who seek power for its own sake, , “Macbeth” is named for the initially much admired and brave Scottish general who received a fateful prophecy from the trio of hags that one day he would become King of Scotland.
