FAMOUS PLAYWRIGHT POET AND OTHERS
MACBETH
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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another name for a witch
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a filthy toad
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a gray spirit cat
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usurped king
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Detailed explanation-1: -A grimalkin, also known as a greymalkin, is an archaic term for a cat. The term stems from “grey” (the colour) plus “malkin", an archaic term with several meanings (a low class woman, a weakling, a mop, or a name) derived from a hypocoristic form of the female name Maud.
Detailed explanation-2: -Shakespeare’s graymalkin literally means “gray cat.” The gray is of course the color; the malkin was a nickname for Matilda or Maud that came to be used in dialect as a general name for a cat-and sometimes a hare-and for an untidy woman as well.
Detailed explanation-3: -When we first see them, the witches in Macbeth refer to their animal familiars of Graymalkin (a cat) and a paddock (toad).
Detailed explanation-4: -Witches were thought to allow the Devil to suckle from them in the form of an animal, such as ‘Graymalkin’ and ‘Paddock’, the grey cat and the toad mentioned by the Witches in Act 1, Scene 1.