What was in the witches brew in Macbeth?

Answer 1

1.

Round about the cauldron go;

In the poison'd entrails throw.

Toad, that under cold stone

Days and nights has thirty-one

Swelter'd venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

2.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

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 owlet's wing,

3.

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,

Witches' mummy, maw and gulf

Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,

Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,

Liver of blaspheming Jew,

Gall of goat, and slips of yew

Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,

Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,

Finger of birth-strangled babe

Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,

Make the gruel thick and slab:

Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,

4. Baboon's blood

5. (From the part that never gets performed because it was probably not written by Shakespeare, and is impossibly cutesy and corny): Blood of a bat, leopard's bane, juice of toad, oil of adder, and three ounces of a red-haired wench.

6.

Pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten

Her nine farrow; grease that's sweaten

From the murderer's gibbet throw

Into the flame.

The summary: poisoned intestines, poison sweat from a toad which spent a month under a stone, the flesh of a snake which lives in a swamp, newt's eye, frog's toe, bat's fur, dog's tongue, poisonous snake's tongue, sting of a blindworm (they don't really have them, but whatever), lizard's leg, owl chick's wing, dragon's scale, wolf's tooth, shark's mouth and throat, powdered corpse of a witch, hemlock root (picked at night), yew tree twigs (picked during a lunar eclipse), goat's gall bladder, Turk's nose, Mongol's lips, Jew's liver, finger from a prostitute's baby who she killed at birth, tiger's intestines, baboon's blood, bat's blood, something to poison leopards with, toad juice (I guess you squeeze them), poisonous snake oil, three ounces of something from a redheaded girl (doesn't say from what part), blood of a female pig which has eaten nine of her babies and the grease from a gallows.

Answer 2

Read the play and you'll know.