Macbeth Glossary

mummy ] mummified flesh.
Editor W. G. Clark explains the significance of mummified flesh in his edition of Macbeth:

Mummy was used as a medicine both long before and long after our author's time. Sir Thomas Browne, in his Fragment on Mummies, tells us that Francis the First always carried mummy with him as a panacea against all disorders. Some used it for epilepsy, some for gout, some used it as a stiptic. He goes on: ' The common opinion of the virtues of mummy bred great consumption thereof, and princes and great men contended for this strange panacea, wherein Jews dealt largely manufacturing mummies from dead carcases and giving them the names of kings, while specifics were compounded from crosses and gibbet leavings.' The same author, in his Hydriotaphia (ch. v.) says: ' The Egyptian mummies which Cambyses spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandize, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.' In Webster, The White Devil, i. 1, we find:

'Your followers
Have swallowed you like mummia, and, being sick,
With such unnatural and horrid physic,
Vomit you up in the kennel.' (143)

Back to Macbeth (4.1)

Reference
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Eds. W. G. Clark and W. A. Wright. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1878.

How to cite this article:

Mabillard, Amanda. Macbeth Glossary. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2009. (date when you accessed the information) < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/macbeth/macbethglossary/macbeth1_1/macbethglos_mummy.html >.

Related Articles

 Macbeth: The Annotated Play
 Macbeth Character Introduction

 Soliloquy Analysis: If it were done when 'tis done (1.7.1-29)
 Soliloquy Analysis: Is this a dagger (2.1.33-61)
 Soliloquy Analysis: To be thus is nothing (3.1.47-71)
 Soliloquy Analysis: She should have died hereafter (5.5.17-28)
 Annotations for Lady Macbeth's Soliloquy (1.5)

 The Curse of Macbeth
 Shakespeare's Sources for Macbeth
 Macbeth Plot Summary (Acts 1 and 2)
 Macbeth Plot Summary (Acts 3, 4 and 5)
 Macbeth Q & A
 Macbeth Study Quiz (with detailed answers)
 Quotations from Macbeth (Full)
 Top 10 Quotations from Macbeth