ABSTRACT

WARNING, FAMILIARITY, AND RIDICULE: TRACING THE THEATRICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE WITCH IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

By Melissa Rynn Porterfield

This work traces the theatrical representation of the witch on the Early Modern English stage. I examine the ways in which the witch was constructed as a binary opposite against which dominant society could define itself. This work provides close readings of three representative plays from the era: Macbeth, The Witch of Edmonton, and The Witches of Edmonton. I also investigate the significance of the personal involvement of King James I in real-life witch trials. This work breaks the progression of the witch into three stages - fear, familiarity, and ridicule – each of which served to allay the anxieties of dominant culture. Situating the texts within the specific historical cosmology of their original productions, I suggest one possible mapping of the intersections of the intersections of gender, class, nation, politics, and economics which they depict.

WARNING, FAMILIARITY, AND RIDICULE: TRACING THE THEATRICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE WITCH IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

A Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Department of Theatre

By

Melissa Rynn Porterfield

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2005

Advisor: ______Dr. Ann Elizabeth Armstrong

Reader______Dr. William Doan

Reader______Dr. Sally Harrison-Pepper

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Introduction p.1

Chapter Two: Danger and Warning: The Women and

Witches of Macbeth p.19

Chapter Three: Gaining Familiarity in The Witch of Edmonton:

Identifying and Enclosing p.45

Chapter Four: Ridicule and Parody in The Witches of

Lancashire p.68

Chapter Five: Conclusion p.85

Appendix A: Synopsis of Macbeth p.90

Appendix B: Synopsis of The Witch of Edmonton p.93

Appendix C: Synopsis of The Witches of Lancashire p.97

Works Cited p.100

ii Chapter One- Introduction

The fearful abounding at this time in this country, of these detestable slaves of the Devil, the witches and enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post, this following treatise of mine. – King James, Daemonologie1

She laughs, and it’s frightening – like Medusa’s laugh – petrifying and shattering constraint. There she is, facing us. Women-witches often laugh…. – Catherine Clement, The Newly Born Woman

The Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries saw a dramatic rise in witchcraft prosecution across Western Europe. In England, this witch-mania reached its historical height near the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, roughly from 1580 to 1600; that is to say, the greatest number of recorded cases of witchcraft prosecutions and executions occurred during this relatively small period of time, in comparison to the long- running pervasiveness of witchcraft prosecutions in the rest of Europe (Macfarlane 26-28). Yet despite these historical circumstances, the cultural witch-craze in England did not reach its true height until later, primarily during the reign of King James. This social fad manifested itself in a number of ways, including its enormous popularity as a subject for theatre of the day. Montague Summers chronicles the appearance of witches in plays from 1500-1800 and counts twenty-four plays depicting accused witches performed on the English stage from approximately 1595-1635 - more than twice that of the combined total remaining witchcraft plays he discusses.2 These productions capitalized on the supernatural aspects of witchcraft and were performed with great frequency throughout both the Jacobean and Carolinian eras, until the closing of the theatres in London in 1642. The image of the witch and the vehicle of the theatre seem to be a natural fit. The spectacle inherent in the supernatural aspects of the witch provided a wealth of vivid opportunities for the employing the latest in scenic and technical advances and for experimenting with the possibilities for new special effects. The Jacobean stage was flooded with images of cauldrons boiling over with body parts, witches raising storms

1 I have modernized the spelling in the passage for ease of reading. 2 Specific dates of performances are unclear in certain cases. See Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology - Chapter 7: The Witch in Dramatic Literature for specific titles and dates. 1 and the dead, orgiastic sex rituals including animals and devils, imps suckling blood from hidden, unnatural teats, and the transformation of humans into animals. These opportunities to stage spectacle were even more enticing to companies that had begun to transition from open-air spaces to either indoor theatres or to more well- funded privately owned venues. For the first time, England’s theatres, which had previously been a relatively egalitarian social site, began to see the first signs of the growing divide between the classes. Wealthy patrons, who had once attended the theatre alongside merchants and peasants, began to channel more funds into private performances. As in the elaborate court masques made popular by Queen Anna, nobles began to back lavish private productions with a seemingly endless budget for the development of scenic technology and special effects which would inevitably make their way onto the public stages of London. By capitalizing on the audience’s growing thirst for spectacle, theatre remained one of the most popular forms of organized entertainment in Early Modern England. The Jacobean theatrical witch vogue can also be seen as a natural progression from the streets to the stage. The widespread accusations of witchcraft during the Elizabethan era were revived due in part to advances in printing. This technology allowed for the mass-publication of pamphlets detailing the events of the trials and interrogations of alleged witches, often before the verdicts in the cases had been rendered. The result was a veritable pamphlet war in which authors battled over the control of public opinion; the winning interpretations of these real-life events were often regarded in popular opinion as truth. This pamphlet war made its way onto the stages of London as they became the basis for a new kind of documentary drama, one “ripped from the headlines.” Witchcraft plays capitalized on the public’s thirst for sensational current events and provided the audience with an escape from everyday reality that was firmly grounded in popular culture. By depicting the actions and characteristics of real-life witches, these plays provided a kind of cultural primer that presented the population at large with the necessary knowledge and tools to identify and enclose the witch. Yet, the most significant result of these witchcraft plays was their reinforcement of the social agenda of asserting the legitimacy of the patriarchal hegemony championed by King James. As a new ruler with a less than direct claim to the English throne, James

2 went to great lengths to establish himself as a right and powerful ruler and to differentiate his rule from the previous, successful rule of Queen Elizabeth.3 By capitalizing on notions as divine right and the supremacy of new intellectual, scientific knowledge, James sought to create a new national identity deeply rooted in patriarchal order that stressed the supremacy of a kingship (not “queenship”). James went to great lengths to depict himself as a kind of father figure to the English population, invested in both their material and spiritual well-being. By investigating three witchcraft plays from the Early Modern period, this thesis seeks to point out the way in which the witch, as a representative of nature, evolved over the first half of the seventeenth century. First, the representation of the witch is vilified in order to provide a negative against which a new, masculine national identity could be defined. The witch is then constructed as a familiar and pervasive threat which must be identified and enclosed in order to maintain a successful social order. Lastly, this highly recognizable identity is ridiculed in order to perpetuate the discourse of patriarchal power. In my reading of three representative plays, I trace the construction of the theatrical representation of the witch. Situating the text within the specific historical cosmology of their original productions, I suggest a possible mapping of the intersections of gender, class, nation, politics and economics which they depict. By exploring their combination of theatricality and historisticity, I seek to examine the ways in which these plays disturb the boundaries of the continuum between life and art and reveal themselves as agents of knowledge production. This examination will focus on the way in which the theatrical witch was constructed both as a binary opposite against which dominant society could define itself. By creating the witch as the other, the power of the spectator is reaffirmed. The act of displaying the dangerous other, encloses that which was previously unknown and mysterious within the realm of dominant society. The naming or identifying of the witch fixes her within the social hierarchy, labeling her as less than human. Within the voyeuristic context of the theatre, presenting the witch as object/other erases the individuality of the spectator, and thereby secures his identity as an unmarked member of

3 For a closer look at James’ attempts to define his reign see McIlwain’s The Political Works of James I, and Perry’s The Making of Jacobean Culture. 3 the dominant culture. Further, by representing the dangerous witch within the controlled framework of entertainment, theatre had the power to either encourage or alleviate anxieties in order to promote the agenda of Early Modern England’s new, rational patriarchy.

Three Faces of the Witch In my search for the roots of the witch archetype in Early Modern dramas, I found a number of different texts that might have served as examples of the theatrical literature of the witch craze. As my thesis concentrates on theatre as a tool in the formation of a masculine national identity for England, I chose plays set in the United Kingdom. For this reason a number of the extant plays were eliminated from the running, including the more well known, Marston’s Sophanisba (1606). A second qualifying criteria was that the type of witch presented be as close as possible to the type of witch prominent in the cultural imagination if the period. For this reason, plays with all-powerful enchantresses, like those of Greek and Roman antiquity, such as Dispsas in Lyly’s Endymion, were eliminated. Though these plays, as well as others that center on more powerful personas of the supernatural female, do reveal similar cultural anxieties over the manifestations of feminine power they are less directly linked to the specific fears of Early Modern England. Likewise plays, such as Middleton’s The Witch (1612) and Johnson’s famous anti-masque, The Masque of Queens, in which spectacle dominates the dramaturgy, were also elminated. Eventually I settled on three plays that each present the image of the witch from very different viewpoints and show the slow progression of the witch image from mysterious, magical beings to hateful humans to laughable stereotypes. Each of the plays also provides a different genre in which the archetype of the witch is handled (high tragedy, domestic drama, and comedy), allowing for the opportunity to explore the ways in which the representation of the witch is changed by the framing provided by each type of drama. In addition, there seemed to me a certain serendipity to choosing three examples to explore the changing image of the theatrical representation of the witch, as

4 three is a sacred number in goddess religions as it is representative of the three phases of a woman’s life: childhood, fertility (menses), and menopausal.4 In Macbeth (1604), the earliest of these, nature is presented as a threatening force with an air of mystery and uncontrollability. As a result, Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters appear as strange and unknowable creatures. The audience was supposed to doubt their sex, the extent of their powers, and even their corporeal bodies. In fact they are not ever referred to as witches. In terms of the larger arc of the plot of the play, the Weird Sisters are merely an intriguing side show; their presence might enhance the mood of the play but it could well be argued that the events of the play would have unfolded in much the same way without their meddling prophesies. Chapter Two asserts that Macbeth constructs the image of the witch as a distinctly feminine threat to the natural social order and as such is an element of the supernatural, capable of tapping into Satanic powers in order to wreak havoc on nature and the state. I will examine the ways in which the play sets up a hyper-masculine reality in which all elements of the feminine represent a danger to the stability of individual households and entire nations. I explore the notion presented in the text that all women possess weak and susceptible natures that mark them as potential witches. The chapter also investigates James’ own interactions with witchcraft trails and his engagement in scholarly witchcraft discourse as attempts to solidify his own authority both in the field of the occult and as the new monarch of England and Scotland, and how these preoccupations are in conversation with Shakespeare’s authorial choices.5 In the second of these plays, Rowley, Dekker, and Ford’s 1921 tragi-comedy, The Witch of Edmonton, the witch takes a much larger role, though arguably, despite the title play, not that of the main character. Two males still hold the spotlight in this domestic drama: Frank Thorney and the Dog (the guise assumed by the Devil in this play). Though Mother Sawyer is accused and executed for her crimes it is clear that she has little, if any, real agency. Here the representation of the witch takes on a more familiar, human form. Mother Sawyer is no longer an unknown, threatening figure but is represented as a disenfranchised, deformed woman bent on seeking revenge. Chapter Three of this work examines the play as a theatricalized version of a real-life witch trial

4 For a more in-depth examination of the three faces of the goddess see D.J. Conway’s Mother, Maiden, Crone: The Myth and Reality of the Triple Goddess. 5 For a plot summary of Macbeth see Appendix A. 5 that acted as a social primer, instructing the population at large on the importance of identifying witches within their own communities. As an integral part of the production and legitimization of new scientific and legislative knowledges, these plays offer the average citizen specific information on the correct ways by which one could enclose the dangerous threat of the witch. I will examine the use of hailing and othering by the villagers in their attempts to label the witch, and consequently secure their own place in the patriarchy. I also point out the ways that the text suggests that marriage and accusation were both successful strategies for enclosing the dangers of witches and women as potential witches. The chapter also explores the performative nature of the witch within a number of different frameworks: the play itself, the morris dance within the play, and in James’ encounters with real-life witch trials.6 In the last of these three plays, Haywood and Brome’s The Witches of Lancashire (1634), the sinister persona of the witch has completely disappeared and been replaced by an extremely comic representation. The play also gives the audience a unique opportunity to see a more balanced view of the story by showing the ineptitude of the men and neighbors in the city as well as the crafty, malevolent dealings of the witches. While this play presents many more instances of witches’ maleficia than are seen in Macbeth or The Witch of Edmonton, they amount to little more than mischievous entertainment and present no serious or lasting harm to their victims, and all of these magical moments are essential to the forward motion of the plot. This latter play also actively questions the existence of witches and presents them purely for entertainment value. These once powerful and mysterious witches are transformed into frivolous and capricious women who, by the end of the play, are reduced to tears by their accusers. Chapter Four compares the real-life trial of the Lancashire witches to the play inspired by those events, noting the elements of fiction present in both. I will investigate the possible economic and political motivations of the authors whose work capitalized on an on-going trial. In this chapter I explore the connection between spectacle and believability in both the reality of the play and the popular mindset of the audience, suggesting that belief in witches often contributed to the growing division of class. Finally, I will examine the

6 For a plot summary of The Witch Of Edmonton see Appendix B. 6 remaining threat posed by witches in the play: their ability to invert and disrupt the patriarchal dominance in sexual and familial arenas.7 Together these selections offer the opportunity to explore the chronological progression of the archetype of the witch during the Early Modern era from warning to familiarity to ridicule. These plays also provide ample examples of the strong associations between woman and nature that render both victims of social subjugation. Lastly these plays depict the results of failing to recognize and adequately subjugate the witch and the woman as potential witch. By examining the ways in which the Early Modern era was able to capitalize on the connections between women and the dark side of the binary, it may be possible to make connections between the Renaissance anxieties that resulted in their own unique representation of the witch and our own modern anxieties which continue to perpetuate that image.

Theoretical Connections The relationship between women and nature is the basis for the field of eco- feminism, a theory developed and coined by the French environmentalist Francois d’Eaubonne. It that argues that because both nature and woman share the same fate of being placed on the “dark” side of the binary system, they are both arenas for patriarchal domination and as such have been reduced to mere commodities. Ecofeminists such as Rosemary Radford Reuther and Charlene Spretnak note that the late Sixteenth and early Seventeenth centuries, with their demise of the feudal system and the rise of the Enlightenment, marked a significant era in the development of this dubious association. During this period, England and its European neighbors experienced a strengthening across the board of the oppositional binary relationships which arose in classical Western antiquity: the differences between mind/body, human/animal, male/female become more pronounced as civilization progressed at the expense of nature. In her examination of these binaries, Helene Cixous points out that the success of patriarchy owes much to the degradation of the feminine which results from the cultural adoption of these “hierarchical oppositions” (64). As England sought to re-define itself in terms of religion, colonization, and intellect, its identity was formed in opposition to the perceived

7 For a plot synopsis of The Witches of Lancashire, see Appendix C. 7 inferior notions of nature, land, and the body, and the witch image provided the perfect synthesis of these anti-ideals. It is this Ecofeminist assertion which accounts for the strong bond between nature and woman in the Early Modern period and which labels both as an uncontrollable site of danger, requiring both degradation and enclosure. In historical examinations of witchcraft prosecutions, materialist feminists such as Christina Larner, Elspeth Whitney, and Anne Barstow have sought to explain the disproportionately high number of women among the accused. Their works focus on sexual division of labor, notions of women’s space and the low socio-economic status of women, particularly among older, unmarried or widowed women who so often found themselves the targets of witchcraft persecution. In an examination of the division of labor, one discovers a preponderance of women involved in professions, such as midwives, herbalists, or healers, which relied heavily on traditional folk wisdom and superstition. The rise of new scientific knowledge and the attempts of the church to eradicate pagan practices resulted in the discrediting of those involved with these occupations and the social displacement8 of a number of women. Further, the maleficia9 attributed to witches most often affected those aspects of culture, such as reproduction, child birth and rearing, and household labor, which were within the domain of woman’s work. Causing illness or death, especially in children and livestock, and spoiling such products as milk, beer, or cheese, were the most frequent accusations against suspected witches (Sharpe 40-41). Each of these was an economically valuable product for which women were responsible. The witch was also a target for religious persecution. One mission of the Christian Church was to eradicate other polytheistic and goddess based religions. Early pagan and matristic societies were defined by their veneration of the earth as a sustaining, nurturing force which fulfilled, on both a mundane and divine level, the same role as a human mother: the land was the visible manifestation of the Great Mother. Thus, by

8 I use this term in place of unemployment, first to recognize that while these occupations did provide some means of financial support to its practitioners they fell more into the category of communal activities and less in the workings of the rising market economy, second to emphasize the loss of identity and community standing of the individual in question, and lastly to hint at the socially ostracizing effects of the vilifying of these types of work. 9 Maleficium and its plural maleficia refer to the harmful acts perpetrated by demonic forces. 8 denying the feminine aspect of the sacred,10 the Church was able to advance its own paternalistic brand of religion that devalued all things associated with all things that they considered to be feminine in nature. The tenuous religious situation in Early Modern England further contributed to the anxiety which resulted in the denigration of the witch. Since Henry VIII’s split from the Catholic Church, England had been torn apart by warring factions of Catholics and Protestants as the spiritual fate of the country hung in the balance. In many ways the witch was a manifestation of the anxieties of a nation positioning itself within new spiritual frame work. She was a physical representation of the mysterious old world order, one against which a new era of rationality and Enlightenment could be defined. Perhaps it is impossible in a discussion that occurs at the intersection of theatre and gender not to make mention of the effects of the male gaze on the feminine object. Following the psychoanalytical work of Jacques Lacan, theorists such as Laura Mulvey, Teresa de Lauretis, Jill Dolan, and Luce Irigaray interrogate the notion of seeing and the relationship between the subject/seer and the object. Theorists such as these assert that the superiority of the spectator arises from the humanist ideals of the Renasissance, in which the scopic field of art is laid out before the viewer in much the same way that the universe was created for God. In this way the spectator is aligned with the supreme power and perfection of a deity and at the same time is necessarily gendered as male. The gendered spectator, like all subjects is fueled by a desire which is attributed to the experience of loss when the (male) child moves out of the Imaginary state, in which the continuum between mother and child is disrupted by the child’s discovery that he is different from his mother. Recognizing the female object’s difference from himself, the male subject, incites both castration anxiety11 and the desire to see. In this context, seeing is the continued manifestation of the desire of the male child to recapture that Imaginary state in which the object is the same as the self. While the subject is represented as an active masculine seeker, the object given to be seen is a passive,

10 There does exist one primary exception to this assertion that the Catholic Church ignored the feminine aspects of the sacred. In certain orthodox sects of Christianity there was active worship of the Black Virgin and other Madonna cults, but even in these practices she is subordinated to both the Father and the Son. 11 Freud’s term for the trauma experienced when the male child recognizes his mother’s lack of penis and, still relying on the shared experience of the Imaginary state, fears that he too has lost his penis. Thus, the female is constructed as a lacking version of the male. 9 femininized embodiment, whose fixed status locates her as being both conspicuously accessible (by virtue of her readily available presentation) and perpetually inaccessible (due to the insatiability of the viewer’s desire). In her book, The Explicit Body in Performance, Rebecca Schneider asserts that the development of classic perspective in Renaissance art strengthened the power of the spectator by making the object to be seen more readily reproducible by rational, mathematical calculation. By gaining more significant creative control over the scopic field, the spectator’s identity as the godhead is further secured. Schneider writes, Interestingly, the institution of perspective actually theatricalized the field of vision, creating “scenographic space” in which all that is given to be seen is, in a sense, staged for the viewer – laid out before him like his own future. In this sense, importantly, the seen became spectacle, an always already theatrical masquerade, a parade of desire, a dreamscape of wishes spread for potential consumption. (67) In this passage she reveals that the elements of the feminized scopic field are created as the other which is open to possession by the spectator. The identity of the spectator is strengthened through the process of seeing; the object is denied the power of sight and therefore she is deprived of the status of the subject. In her article on the history of the image of the witch, Sylvia Bovenschen points out that the (penile) lack of the female marks her as an unnatural threat to the natural male order. Bovenschen insists that the witch is a hyperbole of this notion of the feminine, as unnatural and less than human, embodied in a mysterious, supernatural form. She is, in a sense, a double agent: both a cultural feminist Earth Mother Goddess and simultaneously, a disaster at the cultural heart of our concepts of Nature – again a natural disaster. Her work causes cultural assumptions about the natural and unnatural to ricochet against their own projections, off the screen of her own body, the scene of her art, the seen of her everyday life, into a kind of critical relief. (Schneider 50)

10 Here the witch is posited as the physical embodiment of all things natural, feminine, and mysterious, and as the symbolic representation of the unknown she defies the authority of the spectator. Because the spectator cannot fully comprehend the nature of the witch, she cannot be fully possessed, and, deprived of the absolute power of sight, the spectator’s own identity is challenged. Another relevant theoretical approach I employ in my analysis of the connection between the development of national identity and witchcraft is Foucault’s discussion on the discourse of knowledge and its formative effects on the creation and perception of the subject. Though Foucault is not particularly concerned with a feminist agenda his theories on power and subjectivity have been employed in the work of feminist writers. Of particular interest to this exploration is Foucault’s rejection of a firm, stable a priori subject. This notion is elaborated on in Judith Butler’s work which asserts that, like the notion of self, gender is not inherent but rather is the production of social construction and is continually reaffirmed by the performed actions of both the subject and its society. Likewise, one is not born a witch but becomes one through the process of social interaction. As the cultural discourses of the feudal system that valued notions of community, midwifery, and herb lore began to dissolve, new systems of knowledge arose which defined themselves in direct oppositions to their predecessors. Foucault asserts that as new “official” knowledges began to establish themselves within culture it was necessary to suppress all “naive” knowledge. These official knowledges then functioned “as instruments of normalization continually attempting to maneuver populations into ‘correct’ and ‘functional’ forms of thinking and acting” (McHoul and Grace 44). Foucault also discusses the process by which the subject loses status by becoming object, breaking objectification into three stages. The first stage consists of recognizing difference and categorizing the subject. Foucault refers to the second phase as the “dividing practice,” in which the subject, now identified as different, is separated from the normal population or is forced to divide their own sense of self in an effort to conform. The third stage occurs when the different subject accepts their new position and the assumption of this new representation of themselves grants them agency in the re- inscribing process (McLaren 3). The progression of the English stage witch during the Early Modern era follows much the same pattern: first she is identified by her difference,

11 then she is separated from the community by the process of accusation, and finally her new identity is accepted and subsequently used to used as a warning to other potential transgressors. Lastly, this work will explore the process of othering as it applies to both witches and women as potential witches. In the Early Modern era this process of re-enforcing the patriarchal hegemony creates the cultural representation of the witch, which is transgressive, yet ultimately non-threatening; she is rendered impotent in the process of being identified as different. Peggy Phelan relates the “Other” to that of the dominant in the following way: One term of the binary is marked with value, the other is unmarked. The male is marked with value; the female is unmarked, lacking measured value and meaning. Within this psycho-philosophical frame, cultural reproduction takes she who is unmarked and re-marks her, rhetorically and imagistically, while he who is marked with value is left unremarked, in discursive paradigms and visual fields. He is the norm and therefore unremarkable; as the Other, it is she whom he marks. (5) The marking of the witch, it follows, is the inevitable duty of her fellow villager. By making accusations of witchcraft, the accusers participated in the process of othering and attained power by assuring their own place in the patriarchal hierarchy. This can be seen in each of the play to be examined, as can the knowledge of what attributes mark the character of the witch. By advocating the enclosure of witches through othering, theatre was used as a vehicle for the propaganda of new forms of knowledge.

After Feudalism: A Historical Introduction This exploration will attempt to draw a parallel between the changes in culturally supported, official fields of knowledge concerning notions of land ownership and those concerning the woman as witch, and to understand this parallel it is useful to point out the significance of the historical context in which this witchcraft literature is situated. The

12 chaos that resulted from the dissolution of the feudal system, and the subsequent shift towards a market economy, spurred repercussions throughout many aspects of the day-to- day life of the Jacobean English population. New notions of land ownership and the development of a market economy arose out of the ashes of the former subsistence model of feudalism. This significant socio-economic shift in the utilization of the land dramatically changed its status and the status of nature in general. With the dissolution of the feudal system nature was no longer revered, but dominated in order to fulfill its role within the emerging market economy.12 The socio-economic shift also influenced the basis on which the identity of the individual was based. Under the feudal system, people were identified in part by the land to which they were bound. As that system dissipated, social identities were shaken and civilization began to define itself against the very thing to which they had once been attached: nature. The resulting vilification of nature was a necessary step in justifying its commodification and subsequent domination. The archetype of the witch arose as a cultural parallel to nature: a mysterious force that must be recognized and then subdued in order to insure the socio-economic success of the patriarchal agenda. This threat of chaos is personified in the archetype of the witch. In her article, “The Contemporary Witch, the Historical Witch, and the Witch of Myth,” Silvia Bovenschen examines the parallel between the witch and nature. She points out that the decline of the hierarchical structure espoused by feudalism created an atmosphere of social upheaval. In her model, as man became distanced from his previously symbiotic relationship with the land the perception of nature as a threat increased. With the growing alienation from primal nature, the fear of its effects on social life increased – and thereby fear of women, whose biological functions reminded men if their animalistic origins. In accord with the patriarchal perspective, otherwise divergent powers mobilized brute force in order to free themselves from this memory. They were unsuccessful, despite the deaths of millions of

12 For a basic overview of the transition from feudalism see Richard N.L. Andrews, Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves - Preface, and Michael Leroy Oberg, Dominion and Civility – Introduction, (6-10). 13 women. (Bovenschen 106) This association with nature aligns the witch with an old, native system of knowledge marking her as outside of the accepted social order; as such she is marked as the other. Constructed as inferior to those who ascribe to the dominant official knowledges, the witch was nonetheless a wholly necessary presence, one which acted as the binary opposite to the patriarchal hegemony that dominated the political landscape. The witch’s identity as a woman13with strong ties to nature allowed her to become a scapegoat for a host of social ills and encouraged her domination as a means to secure the patriarchal order. This cultural representation of the witch as a natural other strengthened the masculine identity of Early Modern England. Diane Purkiss echoes this in her book The Witch in History, in which she asserts that the witch was …invented only so that her repression can serve as the driving power of a male narrative. …[She] is an instance of the wild woman who is created by man to ground the creation of a masculine narrative and a masculine civilization. (79) And the “masculine civilization” of the Early Modern era was characterized by its widespread efforts at dominating nature. The witch’s association with the concept of nature reinforced the notion that she was somehow less than human and therefore not worthy of the same consideration or treatment. Further, in an era characterized by increased colonization, this association fostered the notion that witches, like other indigenous populations, required conquering and civilizing (Daughton and Helprin 28- 30). As English colonization began in earnest, the threats inherent in controlling the unknown and uncontrollable forces of nature became all too real and loomed menacingly on the outskirts of the English cultural mindset.

13 Though there were men accused of and executed for the practice of witchcraft in England their numbers were extremely small in comparison to the number of women. See Macfarlane for specific numbers in any given county. Sharpe estimates that approximately 80% of English witches were female (9). Due to this preponderance of women practitioners I have chosen to refer to the “witch” as “she.” 14

The Witch vs. The Empire Dwarfed by the popularity of the reign of his predecessor Queen Elizabeth, James sought to differentiate himself from her and prove himself a formidable leader to not only his own people, but to the leaders of the surrounding, hostile European nations. The political landscape was deeply divided over allegiance to the Catholic Church. England’s nearest neighbors, France, Spain, and Italy, were its most antagonistic enemies. The warring between the Protestants and Catholics in England, which had been quieted somewhat during Elizabeth’s reign, resumed with a new sense of fervor with the ascension of James, son of the devoutly Catholic Queen Mary of Scotland. In his attempt to stabilize a nation wracked with growing pains, James sought to create a powerful new national identity of a decidedly masculine character, and to present himself as a monarch with both the intellectual prowess and the conquering will to assure the successful future of a country in the midst of turmoil (Perry 46). The field of witchcraft afforded a number of opportunities to serve as a parallel in which James, the symbol of England, could be seen as a force that conquered the chaos which threatened English society. One of the many ways in which James sought to distinguish his reign of England from that of his predecessor, Queen Elizabeth, was to concentrate his efforts on the agenda of colonizing North America. Though England claimed a large portion of the Americas as its own, Elizabeth put very little emphasis on colonization. The Queen chose to focus her efforts on another means of economic gain: piracy, a field well suited to a country which prided itself on its naval supremacy. By the time James came to the throne his European rivals had far surpassed the English in the conquest and colonization of the New World. Desperate to compete with his European rivals, and seeking to prove himself as a formidable, powerful ruler, James chose to pursue the formation of an English Empire by stepping up efforts to colonize the New World (Friedenberg 19-21). His pursuit of empire also served to differentiate himself from the queenship of Elizabeth which had failed to capitalize on man’s ability to conquer and dominate. By restoring land to the realm of things belonging to the king by sheer, divine right, the king was able to regain some of the power which may have been perceived as having been lost in

15 England’s conversion to a more privatized means of land ownership. The feudal nature of land distribution within the colonies renewed the image of the king as patriarchal leader of the land, reinforcing the notion that all “real estate” in the New World was “royal estate”(Andrews 15). As Native American civilizations, began to arise as a dangerous threat from without to the successful ordering of the empire, so too the witch emerged as a parallel threat from within. Both were perceived as being pagans, devoid of the civilizing grace of God and dangerously close to the natural elements of the earth. By their assignation to the feminine side of the binary, Native Americans, like their “natural sister” the witch, were stripped of their status as human beings.14 In the Early Modern view the New World, like nature itself, was a dark world in need of the strong hand to set it in the right and “natural order” as determined by God. The power of the Native Americans, like witches, lay in the belief that they were agents of the supernatural, empowered by the Devil himself. It was, in fact the opposition against which the civility of Western Europe was defined. Its feminine weakness had made it prey to the evil lurking beyond the reaches of civilization. James writes in Daemonologie, his intellectual treatise on the occult written in 1597, that the “wild parts of the world” were at great risk to the forces of evil because “where the Devil finds greatest ignorance and barbarity, there he assails the grossliest” (47). This work, as well as other treatises on the threat of the supernatural, capitalized on the fear of the unknown on the part of the general populace, which provided the chief motivation for the establishment of stereotypes such as the witch. Just as colonization was presented as the means by which to fight the threat from without, marriage was presented as a means to combat the threat from within. As eco- feminists have pointed out, a parallel with the rising commodification of land can be seen in the cultural notions of ownership imposed on women, specifically in regard to customs surrounding marriage. As a hierarchical organization employed by the patriarchal hegemony, marriage traditionally has supplied the means by which the female body, and

14 Shakespeare’s The Tempest, is the literary work most often examined for this connection between the Native American and the supernatural, but other Renaissance works reference this as well. See Joan Pong Linton’s The Romance of the New World: Gender and the Literary Formations of English Colonialism, and Dorothea Kehler and Susan Baker’s In Another Country: Feminist Perspectives on Renaissance Drama. 16 feminine nature in general, can be enclosed. Male dominance is assured in this system in which women, sinful and deviant by nature, are deprived of agency and are possessed as sexual objects.15 The subjugation of women in the name of Christianity provided the basis for the view of them as naturally transgressive beings. The Church presented women as the bearers of original sin, incapable of restraining their baser tendencies, lustful, emotional and of weak moral fiber and warned men to beware of their evil tendencies. The Malleus Maleficiarum confidently asserts that, “All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable” (qtd, in Kors 36). Warnings such as this informed men that failing to dominate women would result in the creation of opportunities for the devil to take control of them for his own use. This idea of marriage as a means of suppressing the transgressive urges of women can be seen in the union between the witch and the Devil. The pact formed between them is most commonly referred to as a “marriage” and, like the union between man and wife, this union is sealed by a sexual encounter between the witch and the Devil. This marriage, like its more common, worldly counterpart, acts as a means of enclosure. Unmarried women, or uncontrollable married women with shrewish tendencies, are deprived of their own agency and placed under the control of a masculine power. Apparently, even Satanic control is less threatening to Early Modern society than feminine power, which presented the ultimate threat of disturbing the natural world order. Marriage was an example of a social institution that served as a way to alleviate the potential threats perceived in women by acting as a means of enclosure that controlled the transgressive. Further, marriage legally gave the husband possession of his wife and her possessions. It also maintained a means of class discrimination by its strictest legal definition; laws passed in the sixteenth century elevated the image of marriage to “a highly privileged status” in which “couples typically married only when they had accumulated the financial resources to keep a household” (Linton 14). The economic hierarchy of marriage is furthered by the fact that, just as the king rightfully controlled the trade of goods of his kingdom, a husband controlled the sexual market of his wife.

15 See Mary Ellen Rickey and Thomas B. Stroup’s “On Marriage” from Certain Sermons or Homilies.

17 Finally, the witch could also be enclosed by legally assigning her to the category of witch. On a local level social pressures to identify witches within one’s community ran high. And while the informal social label of witch was useful as a warning of the potential dangers of the abject feminine, the ultimate goal was to make a formal legal accusation of witchcraft. James’ establishment of the English witchcraft Act of 1604 and the resulting shift in court jurisdictions combined to create a highly structured means of accusations. Proving that one was a witch required more than idle gossip, it was necessary to have evidence of more than one form of her transgressions against the divinely mandated patriarchal order. Combined with the emergence of intellectual discourse on the topic of witchcraft, the legal statutes formed a new system of knowledge which dominated the field of witchcraft until 1736, when new legislation on the matter was finally enacted. The short comings of the witch made her a significant threat to Early Modern society; her moral weakness and insatiable lust made her susceptible to Satanic influence and her close association with animals reinforced her shortcomings as a human, just as her reliance on folk wisdom placed her on the fringe of a changing society. By controlling the fruits of women’s production, as well as their reproduction, women remained dependent on men and therefore were not in danger of being controlled by the devil. Masculine control, whether in the form of the Church, marriage, or witchcraft prosecutions was required to end the agency of witch and woman alike and thereby assure the stability of the patriarchy. Yet, it is not only the stability of the nation that is bolstered by the representation of the witch. The identity of the individual is also stabilized by the display of the other, as the process of the gaze allows for the (masculine) control of the object to be seen. “As the unknown, the presence of the woman onstage provides a necessary element of spectacle- a screen onto which the determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the feminine figure” (Mulvey 272). The witch, by virtue of her connection with the natural and the supernatural, provides the perfect screen onto which the anxieties and fantasies of the masculine can be projected. This work will examine the ways in which the theatrical representations of the witch in Macbeth, The Witch of Edmonton, and The Witches of

18 Lancashire, mark the intersection between cultural anxieties, the creation of a new national identity, and the continued use of the binary denigration of women.

19 Chapter Two – Danger and Warning: The Women and Witches of Macbeth

In women are incarnated the disturbing mysteries of nature, and man escapes her hold when he frees himself from nature. – Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

History of the Play and Introduction Macbeth is a play woven from the threads of political intrigue, rebellion, nature and the supernatural. It has been argued by scholars such as Henry James Neill, that of all of Shakespeare’s plays it most closely represents the political climate of the Jacobean Era. It reflects James’ own fascination with witchcraft and notions of kingship, as well as the culturally prevalent masculine anxieties concerning feminine agency. It resonates with the threat of a dark, mysterious evil. Even in our own time there persists about it a certain air of mystery and danger; its mere mention in a theatre is thought to cause bad luck. The very history of the play is a dubious one with uncertain beginnings. There are no surviving Quartos of Macbeth and the first known printing was the First Folio version in 1623. The text originated from a single prompt book that was used by the King’s Men at a royal command performance at Hampton Court. Some scholars insist that the length of the play, by far the shortest tragedy ever written by Shakespeare, the irregular line spacing of the Folio text and the lack of an original listing of the Dramatis Personae indicates that the existing version was a cutting designed specifically for a court performance.16 In addition it was widely rumored that Shakespeare’s patron, King James I, disliked long plays. Another textual anomaly is the addition of the two songs of Hecate (4.1) that have been interpolated into the text from Middleton’s play The Witch. Though Middleton’s work was not published until 1778 (Muir xxxv), accounts of the play in performance can be found as early as 1613. The Witch, though a favorite of Prince

16 For a more complete discussion of the scholarly debate on the text of Macbeth see Muir and Edward’s Introduction. 20 Henry,17 was described by many as a failure, and it is likely that when Middleton began his work with Shakespeare, as one of the other writers for The King’s Men, he salvaged some of the songs from his earlier work and added them to Shakespeare’s text. Macbeth seems to have been tailor-made for the new royal family. The first recorded reference that we have of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is from Simon Forman’s published memoir, The Book of Plays and Notes Thereof Per Forman’s For Common Policy, in which he gives his account of a production of Macbeth at the Globe Theatre on April 20, 1610 (Muir xvi- xvii). 18 Though Forman’s account is primarily an incomplete and inaccurate plot summary it does provide us with one of the few printed references as to the possible date the play was written. While it is possible that it might have been written as early as 1603 or as late as 1611, analysis of the language of the text coupled with historical events prompts most scholars to agree that the play was most probably written in 1606. Scholars generally acknowledge Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, as the primary source for Macbeth. Shakespeare’s version is a conglomeration of at least two different accounts of the usurpation of the Scottish throne by nobles who rise to power by murdering the ruling king. Macbeth is unquestionably one of Shakespeare’s more political plays, in content as well as inspiration. The play centers on the struggle for the Scottish throne and examines the rights of royal succession and the nature of statecraft. Yet perhaps the most defining aspect of the play is its inclusion of the three witches and their involvement in the rule of the nation. Shakespeare capitalized on popular issues of the day in order to curry the favor of his new king, James, and to capture the interest of the audience of the day. To accomplish this he combined historical accounts with concepts from James’ own writings on kingship and the supernatural in order to weave a tale that is at once credible and fantastic. The play’s issues touched nerves that were raw in English cultural mindset making it the “must-see” theatre of its day. After the death of Elizabeth I, England’s national identity was on precarious footing; the Tudor line had come to an end, and the designated successor was the son of a

17 Henry was James’ first son and the crown prince of England until his death at an early age. The young prince was reported to have been a great lover of the theatre. 18 It is commonly believed that the year of this account is erroneous as Forman is clear on the fact that the performance occurred on a Saturday. Yet April 20 fell on a Saturday in 1611, not 1610. Attributing the account to the year 1611 also coincides with records of performances from the Globe. 21 staunchly Catholic Queen who had been executed for her attempts on the life of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth. James ascension also marked the unification of two adversarial nations: England and Scotland. Since her Henry V’s, break with the Catholic Church and his subsequent establishment of the Church of England, Scotland had become England’s closest enemy. James’ succession fueled English fears that their country would be torn apart by its warring Catholic and Protestant contingencies. In light of the hostility James faced from his new subjects, Shakespeare’s Macbeth is perhaps the greatest service that the artist ever performed for his royal patron. It reaffirmed James’ hereditary right to the English throne, provided King Duncan as an example of a kind and benevolent Scottish king, and demonstrated a model of cooperation between England and Scotland. But most important, Shakespeare created a common enemy against which these previously adversarial nations could unify: the witch. By combining the physical form of the English witch with the powers of the Scottish witches, Macbeth conjures a threat so real and so dangerous that it required constant vigilance on the part of all of the subjects of James’ new empire. It appealed to the concerns of a country on the verge of a new monarchy with a Scottish king and re-ignited the anxieties associated with popular witchcraft lore at the end of the height of witchcraft trials in England during the 1590’s. Yet, if these were Shakespeare’s intentions he was in good company, for James had done no less in his own writings and in his earliest actions as king. Eager to place himself at the forefront of the intellectual discourse of his day, James wrote several treatises to demonstrate his expertise in the matters of kingship and the occult. His personal involvement with real life witch trials of the day regenerated fear of and interest in the field of witchcraft. The resulting urgency created the need for order, authority and discourse on the matter, and James was only too happy to oblige. By aiding in the establishment of witchcraft as a field of intellectual discourse and empirical knowledge he positions himself as its supreme authority. As Peter Stallybrass maintains, “Witchcraft in Macbeth…is not simply a reflection of a pre-given order of things: rather, it is a particular working upon, and legitimation of, the hegemony of patriarchy” (26). The connections between national identity and Macbeth have been at the forefront of recent scholarship on the play. Jane Coles touches on the play in her book, Much Ado about Nationhood and Culture: Shakespeare and the Search for ‘English’ Identity.

22 Works such as Albert Rolls’, “Macbeth and the Uncertainties of Succession Law,” Sally Mapstone’s “Shakespeare and Scottish Kingship,” Reginald J. Boling’s “Tanistry, Primogeniture, and the Anglicizing of Scotland in Macbeth,” are socio-political examinations that focus primarily on the specifics of the concepts of rights of succession and conflicting notions of kingship. Another prolific area of scholarship on the work consists of feminist readings of either Lady Macbeth or the Witches, which include such notable works as Phyllis Rackin’s “Staging the Female Body,” Lorraine Helms’ “The Weyward Sisters,” Katerina Kitsi-Mitakou’s “ ‘None Born of Woman’,” and Joanna Levin’s “Lady Macbeth and the Daemonologie of Hysteria.” My analysis takes its cues from both of these arenas and suggests that Shakespeare’s (re?)/creation of the witch, (and indeed all women as potential witches), poses a distinctly feminine and dangerous threat to the natural order. By establishing the witch as a common hazard against which every citizen could unite, Macbeth helped to re-enforce the new, masculine national identity of Jacobean England. This chapter asserts that Macbeth constructs the identity of the witches and other aberrations of the natural world as the direct result of feminine agency. It explodes the gap of the male/female binary by establishing masculinity as the measure of all things good and femininity as a danger to the successful ordering of the universe. In its established hyper-masculine state the feminine principle and its maternal manifestations pose a threat to the natural order and must be identified as such. Through this over- valorization of the masculine principle Shakespeare seems to imply that feminine disturbances to the patriarchy precipitate violence. Order is not restored in the play until all aspects of feminine power (reproductive, maternal, supernatural, and matrilineal succession) have been removed. The play warns of the dangers of feminine influence and of the potential of all women, as sites of weakness, to become a threat to the status quo: to become a witch.

James and the Witches The height of witchcraft trials in England may have occurred during the reign of Elizabeth, but perhaps no monarch’s fate was so intertwined with that of witches than that of King James. James was alleged to be the target of a number of witchcraft plots

23 against his life and as such he maintained an active belief in the existence of witches, aligning him with the superstitious majority of his subjects. Yet he also fancied himself something of an intellectual scholar on witchcraft and displayed a healthy degree of skepticism as to the extent of their powers, which allowed him to represent an enlightened voice of reason that appealed to the elite elements of society. James’ ability to appease a wide range of social opinions, (as well as his power as a monarch), allowed him to establish himself as an authority on witchcraft. He capitalized on his perceived expertise in the field in order to demonstrate his ability to act as a sensitive and just ruler. James’ ongoing fascination with matters of the occult led him to write a treatise on the subject in 1597, entitled Daemonologie, which was reprinted in England in 1603 and enjoyed great public and critical popularity. The intellectual elite of England hotly debated the topic of witchcraft during the 1590’s and 1600’s, and writers such as Gifford, Jordan, Harsnet and Scott had all authored treatises on the subject. Christine Larner suggests that the King’s interest in the matter may have sprung from his attempt to appear savvy to a group of Continental scholars that he encountered during a visit to Denmark during 1589. In England, the wide range of opinions on witchcraft ran the gamut between those who believed with religious fervor in the reality of witches who derived their power from Satan and his demons, to those who believed that all supernatural elements, including witches, could be explained away by scientific examination and that their very existence was the result of the overactive and paranoid imagination of the general population. Daemonologie’s popularity was no doubt due to the fact that James’ work struck the perfect middle road between these two extremes. His treatise acknowledged the existence of not only witches, but a wide variety of supernatural creatures of varying degrees of malicious intent - including imps, devils, fairies, sprites, natural elemental spirits, and sorcerers - each of which he described in terms of appearance and temperament. James utilizes Daemonologie as a social primer for the dissemination of new, official knowledge on the topic of the occult. The book was structured as a kind of academic conversation between a student and a scholar, consisting of a series of questions, each followed by a lengthy response. In the opening words to the reader the king writes:

24 The fearefull aboundinge at this time in this countrie, of these detestable slaues of the Deuil, the witches and enchaunters, hath moved me (beloued reader) to dispatch in post, this following treatise of mine. (2) In this dedication to his “beloved” subjects depicts James himself as concerned father figure aiming to educate and protect his subjects. The book rekindled a belief in the ever- present danger of witches within a society that had only recently moved out of its height of witchcraft persecutions. While James’ theories revealed a god-fearing belief in the possibility of physical incarnations of Satanic power, he maintained in each answer that the true existence of these phenomena was exceedingly rare. He suggested that, more often than not, those accused of witchcraft were the victims of circumstance, vicious rumor and innuendo, or mental illness. By allowing for such a wide range of possible truths James accomplished two significant results. First, he bridged the gap between the classes, endearing himself to both the intellectual elite and the superstitious general populace. Secondly, he created the need for new system for the evaluation of the potentially supernatural. His position as the creator of compromise within occult discourse allowed him to establish his own set of values as the new official knowledge of the field, and his position of power as the monarch of first Scotland and later England lent further validity to his position as the ultimate authority on the subject. Despite James’ own moderate views19 on the topic of witchcraft, Daemonologie exerted a powerful force on the cultural mindset of the English citizen-subject. It reaffirmed the idea that the threat witchcraft was real. Further it established the need for a field of witchcraft discourse, in both the academic and popular arenas, which acknowledged the existence of the supernatural: a set of right, official knowledges needed to assure the safety of both the English nation and its people. James, by virtue of his status as monarch, lent validity to the idea that it was necessary to revive interest in the occult and to expand the field of accepted knowledge on the issue. This strategic use of knowledge production allowed him to position himself as an expert not only in

19 By the term moderate I refer to two things: James’ vacillation between the existence/non-existence of witches, and his belief that witchcraft might result from a number of different causes, (heresy, hysteria, lust, etc.) and could not empirically be identified as resulting from just one. 25 witchcraft but also in matters of religion, medicine, and even human nature. But James was not content with a mere academic interest in these issues and insisted on his personal involvement with a number of witchcraft trials of the day. Yet in James’s earliest dealings with witches he played the role of the victim of more often than that of the judge. The Bible says, “For rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft” (I Samuel 15:23), and, like Macbeth, James’ rule was filled with both. Treasonous plots against James were frequent and frequently involved an aspect of the supernatural. In North Berwick, Scotland more than 300 individuals were tried for witchcraft in 1590 for their connection with a conspiracy against the life of the King led by the Earl of Bothwell. Among the more publicized confessions was the account of a group of women, led by a woman rumored to have been Bothwell’s mistress, who admitted to trying to kill the king by constructing a waxen image of him that they tortured in effigy (Stallybrass 27). As one might expect, given the volatile political and religious climate, attempts on James’ life were frequent and witches were often believed to be part of those plots. A young woman named Agnes Tompson revealed another attempt on the life of King James in a famous confession of the North Berwick trials. Tompson confessed that she used poisonous toad venom to work a fatal spell against the monarch. Another woman, Agnes Sampson was also able to give a word for word account of an intimate conversation between the King and Queen on their wedding night in Norway (Stallybrass 27). Still other testimonies revealed that members of the conspiracy attempted to use sorcery in order to raise a storm at sea in order to prevent James’ and Anna’s voyage back from Denmark to Scotland, (Nostbakken 91). By the end of the North Berwick trials of 1590, thirty-nine people were convicted of participating in witchcraft plots against the king’s life, including a number of members of the Scottish nobility. Soon after the trials subsided in 1597, James published Daemonologie in Scotland. It was later reprinted it for the English public after his ascension to the English throne in 1603. One of James’ earliest actions as the King of England was to pass the Witchcraft Act of 1604. Both Elizabeth and James passed anti-witchcraft laws in 1563, but the English act was much less severe. With this new witchcraft act of 1604, James repealed Elizabeth’s earlier attempt with one more similar to the act that he had passed in

26 Scotland in 1563. The English 1563 statute was merely a broad prohibition of witchcraft that did not specify any particular acts to which the statue would apply, provided no prescribed means of conviction and prescribed relatively light sentences. The 1604 statute, which would remain in effect until 1736, was extremely specific as to what acts were to be considered as witchcraft. It also included methods of discovery and interrogation that might be used in its enforcement and increased the number of offenses punishable by death.20 Further, by aligning the legislature of England and Scotland James helps to strengthen the unity of his fledgling empire. James’ involvement with the witches of England began before the monarch even arrived for his coronation. On route to London, the king made a practice of personally overseeing many of the country trials of accused witches and, much to the chagrin of local authorities, he often ruled that the accusations were the result of local hysteria or over-aggressive, or religiously fanatic accusers or prosecutors. By becoming involved with these trials he supported the notion that the threat of witches was real and demonstrated his personal concern for his new subjects, the potential victims of witchcraft. At the same time, because he frequently ruled that the woman in question was innocent of the charges against her, he acted as the champion of the downtrodden and wrongfully accused. He also appeased the intellectual elite of the day through his support of intellectual examinations and scientific explanations. Perhaps the most famous of these interventions occurred in the case of Elizabeth Jackson. Elizabeth Jackson was an elderly charwoman imprisoned in Newgate Prison for the crime of witchcraft based on the charges of Mary Glover, a fourteen year old daughter of a merchant, who claimed that she had been bewitched by Jackson. The debate over the true nature of Glover’s affliction was extremely well publicized and had sparked a pamphlet war between disagreeing experts. After extensive reading into the case, James discovered that the issue had been distilled around the arguments of three men: Dr. Edward Jorden, Samuel Harsnet, and John Swan. Dr. Jorden, who considered himself a proponent for the scientific enlightenment, examined the girl and concluded that her ailments were “really due to fits of the mother or, in modern language, hysteria” (qtd. in Paul 103). Samuel Harsnet, the secretary of the Bishop of London and the state’s

20 The specific legal ramifications of the Act of 1604 are discussed further in Chapter Three of this work. 27 foremost authority on witchcraft, believed that Mary Glover was a fraud and that Jackson had been wrongfully accused. John Swan was a student of divinity and was one of the six puritan ministers who led Glover’s parents and eighteen on-lookers in an attempted exorcism of Mary. James decided to further delay his journey in order to investigate for himself whether Mary was the victim of evil, truly insane, or a malicious liar. After extensive interviews of all parties involved James agreed with Dr. Jorden that Mary Glover was the victim of “fits of the mother.” By asserting that the alternative potential to becoming a victim was to become a hysteric, James like other intellectuals of his day, perpetuated an early version of the biological determinist view that women were the physically inferior version of man. It is worth remarking that hysteria was referred to at the time as “fits of the mother,” an obvious indictment of the maternal as a force of destruction parallel to that of disease or physical abnormality. In one move James had positioned himself as the ultimate authority on witchcraft - one in disagreement with both church leaders and state officials and aligned with intellect and science. The logical authority of man had rectified the social disorder that had originated from the weakness and evil of women. James’ personal involvement in the trial demonstrated that he was more concerned with the pursuit of truth and justice than the representatives of his predecessor, Queen Elizabeth. Purkiss attributes James’ involvement in the Glover case to the fact that it “offered an even more powerful means of defining the observer as the possessor of knowledge and interpretive skill” (Purkiss 201). Though the intellect of masculine rule had triumphed over the previous superstitious, feminine regime, James was careful to not belittle the sufferings of the young woman, preferring to perpetuate her victim status, a move which made him appear to be her sympathetic defender: a protector of all of his people. Eventually James released Elizabeth from prison but no action was ever taken against Mary Glover for her slander (Paul 107-112). Though it is possible, as Henry O’Neill Paul suggests, that he was avoiding entering the city of London due to an outbreak of the plague, James’ interest in the case cannot be misconstrued as a passing whim as he spent a considerable amount of his own time and funds to cover the cost of Jackson’s imprisonment and the series of experts that he hired for the exaination. He did not arrive in London for his coronation until 1604.

28 In the Jackson/Glover case all forms of female agency are negated. To begin, the validity of all witchcraft claims were judged by a group comprised entirely of men who claimed to be experts on witches, (a group comprised primarily of women). Also, each possible version of the truth, according to these “experts,” paints a picture of women as sites of weakness with the potential to result in a disruption of the natural order. As in the case of witches themselves, if an accuser was truly the victim of demonic possession it was due to the naturally inferiority of women who were spiritually weak and therefore susceptible to evil influence. If a victim was truly a hysteric, then her lapse into mental illness was the result of her mental weakness. James’ ruling that Elizabeth Jackson was innocent of her crimes did little to vindicate her; it marks her as being as powerless as her alleged victim. This theme of thwarted female agency is echoed through out Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In the violent and hyper-masculine world of the play, women and witches represent a threat to men’s very lives and to the nation of Scotland itself.

Rights of Succession and Masculine Anxieties James’ also exhibited a healthy fascination with the much-debated theories on the rights of succession that can be seen in his unflagging support of the concept of Divine Right, an issue that began to be the target of criticism throughout Western Europe during the Early Modern Era. According to this doctrine a monarch was entitled to his or her rule purely on the basis of their royal lineage; that is to say that a person with the correct family connections is the “God-ordained” heir to the throne regardless of their abilities or intentions as a leader. Further, this concept granted monarchs absolute and unquestionable power over their laws and subjects. However, in the volatile city-states of Italy and in other smaller European and Mediterranean areas, this idea had begun to be challenged. In 1513, Italian political writer Niccolo Machiavelli published The Prince in which he discussed his views of kingship. Specifically of note to Macbeth is Machiavelli’s assertion that horrific cruelties and the immoral behavior of a ruler are justified if he can provide an improved sense of security and peace to their subjects (Nostbakken 40). Another author who advocated change in the king/subject relationship was Englishman John Ponet. While he was in exile he published A Short Treatise on

29 Politic Power (published in 1556) to empower the subjects of monarchy. In this work Ponet asserted that the power of law making belonged to the people alone. He also argued that the people had the right to overthrow or even kill a ruler that was unjust, tyrannical, corrupt, or otherwise unfit. According to him the conscious of the subjects, along with natural law could both be motivating factors for a justified rebellion (43). James, who acquired the English throne from an indirect family tie, and whose reign was fraught with the treasonous plots of political dissidents, was a strong supporter of Divine Right. He authored two works outlining his beliefs about kingship: The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598) and Bascilicon Doron (1599). Shakespeare was sensitive to this ongoing debate between his new king and other more revolutionary political theorists. In fact the issues of kingship and the rules that govern succession to the throne are at the very heart of Macbeth. Bascillicon Doron was written as an instructional pamphlet written for the instruction of his young son, Henry, and like Daemonolgie, takes the form of an academic conversation. The work theorizes on the differences between the tyrant and the “good king.” According to James the good king’s greatest concern should be for the welfare of his people, to whom he serves as a “natural father and kindly Master” (18).21 Nowhere in the play is the influence of James’ more keenly felt than in scene 4.3, in which Macduff travel to England to enlist the help of Malcolm, the crown prince, in overthrowing Macbeth. Suspicious of Macduff’s true motives, Malcolm pretends to be a tyrant, uninterested in the right governing of Scotland and having none of the “king- becoming graces”(4.3.91). In the course of their dialogue they reiterate, in strikingly similar language, the good king/tyrant debate laid out in Bascillicon Doron.22 In addition to pleasing James by citing the monarch’s own theories on kingship, Shakespeare would have been keenly aware that engaging in this rhetoric would allow him to capitalize on a hot button issue among the elite of the day. In addition to defending the concept of Divine Right, James was greatly interested in exploring his Stewart family lineage and was exceptionally proud of the fact that he

21 My emphasis here. 22 For a more detailed examination of the issue of Divine Right in Macbeth see Leon Harold Craig’s “Of Philosophers and Kings: Political Philosophy in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King Lear,” and Arthur Kinney’s “Scottish History, the Union of the Crowns, and the Issue of Right Rule: The Case of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.” 30 was able to prove that they were direct descendants of Banquo, the Thane of Lochquhaber, who is featured in Holinshed’s account of Makbeth in his Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The eighth generation of the Banquo line married the Scottish Queen Marjory, the daughter of Robert Bruce, making James the ninth king of the Banquo line (Paul 151). Shakespeare references this when Macbeth sees the spirits of the nine kings that the weird sisters prophesy that Banquo will beget.23 To further align himself with his patron and king, Shakespeare wrote Macbeth as if the same rules of succession that governed Early Modern England were also in place in 11th century Scotland, when in fact their customs differed greatly. In Makbeth’s era the throne would have been passed down matrilineally(31). 24 In Holinshed’s account of Makbeth, Duncane names Malcome as his heir breaching the protocol of succession because Makbeth, as Duncane’s maternal cousin, has much stronger claim on the throne than Malcome. In the Chronicles this slight is one of the main sources of Makbeth’s anger towards Duncane. Shakespeare neglects to mention the exact nature of the kinship between his Macbeth and Duncan, and so the Jacobean audience would have seen no motive other than ambition for Macbeth’s actions, thereby further vilifying him as a usurper. In his creation of the hyper-masculine reality of Macbeth, Shakespeare removes the story of Makbeth from its specific historical/cultural location in order to remove the feminine influence of matrilineal succession. Macbeth is, in part, much like Bascillicon Doron: the story of kings, their rights in attaining power, and their responsibilities in governing. It asserts that the state of a monarchy is, like the family unit, most successful when it is led by a firm-handed, righteous, father figure and free from feminine influence. In her discussion of the masculine values in Macbeth, Marilyn French writes, In worlds dominated by the masculine principle, the feminine principle is partly scorned, but it is also partly feared. It is, after all, the pole of nature and feeling; it is uncontrollable in its spontaneity and disregard for

23Depicting this ninth spirit (presumably the specter of King James) technically violated the theatrical statute of the time that forbade the representation of current monarchs and members of ruling families on the English stage. 24 In Scottish matrilineal succession a king’s heir would have been his sister’s son, or in the absence of a sister the heir would be the son of the king’s maternal aunt. 31 power. (20) Macbeth is a call to end the dangers of female agency and to champion the family and the nation that is free from the power of women. In the play Shakespeare establishes a social order in which “good families” are those free from feminine control, and “bad families” are those who are under the influence of women. Macbeth’s “anti-family25” is besieged by destructive feminine influence, from without, in the form of the witches, and from within, from Lady Macbeth. In contrast, the family of Banquo and Fleance is free from women, creating Fleance with the feminine free material necessary to be a good king, and paying honor to the James’ ancestors. The Siward family also lacks a woman, a fact that enables them to become superior warriors who are loyal to the crown and willing to die, like a man, in battle. Macduff is of little importance to the plot of the play until Lady Macduff is murdered. His house gains “good family” status, and he becomes the champion of Scotland, when all traces of feminine agency are removed from their sphere. In fact, aside from the witches, all of the women are dead by the end of the play. Duncan’s family is conspicuously missing a Queen, thereby freeing the rightful heirs to the throne, Malcolm and Donaldbaine, from the destructive influence of a woman. Further, Malcolm is “unknown to women” (4.3.126) distancing him even further from the wiles of feminine intervention. The king actively rejects his own need for feminine involvement, even in regard to reproduction, in this metaphor in which he paints himself as both mother and father. KING: I have begun to plant thee, and will labor To make thee full of growing. ……………………………………………… BANQUO: There if I grow, The harvest is your own. KING: My plenteous joys, Wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves In drops of sorrow. (1.4.27-35)

25 Stallybrass’s term used to define those households in the play whose women characters are either not mentioned or do not exist (32). 32 In this passage Duncan casts himself as the sower of the seed and the laborer in the production (/reproduction?) of the land. He takes on characteristics most commonly associated with women, describing himself as “wanton in fullness,” a description classically reserved for that of an overly emotional, (often pregnant), woman. He also admits to crying tears of joy. Malcolm takes up the same metaphor in his last speech of the play in which he claims the throne. He speaks of the changes he will make in the running of the country, claiming that these new practices “would be planted newly with the time” (5.8.65). The pressure to produce suitable (male) heirs can be felt throughout the play. In his critical essay, “The Character of Lady Macbeth,” Freud asserts that the action of the play is based solely on Macbeth’s failure to procreate. Though this connection to Macbeth’s motives shed little light on his original crime of killing Duncan, it does clarify his intense anxiety over Banquo and Fleance. Macbeth knows from the prophesy of the witches that Banquo will not be king, but will “get kings” (1.3.67). The implication here being that, because Macbeth is childless, Banquo’s heirs will ascend to the throne. If Macbeth has Banquo killed simply because he fears that Banquo will reveal their encounter with the witches, then he wouldn’t have been so compelled to continue pursuing the Fleance, as the youth bears no immediate threat to Macbeth. Rather it is Macbeth’s need to assure his own masculine succession that creates his anxiety over Fleance’s escape. He bemoans his childlessness in a soliloquy in which he recalls his encounter with the witches: MACBETH: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown And put a barren scepter in my gripe, Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. (3.1.61-64) It is this same paternal anxiety that prompts him to demand that his wife “Bring forth men-children only” (1.7.72). Throughout the play Macbeth is tortured by the image of children. In the conjuring scene (4.1), Macbeth is confronted by two children who he perceives with dread: the bloody baby, (an illusion to the “untimely ripped” Macduff), and the crowned child with a tree, (the Ninth generation of Banquo’s royal family tree). His preoccupation with children as a threat to his crown can be seen in his vigilant pursuit

33 of Fleance, his order to kill Macduff’s children before they can exact revenge on him, and his fear of the possible return of Malcolm, the true heir to the throne, who refers to himself as a “weak, poor, innocent lamb” (4.3.16) which has been sacrificed to Macbeth’s rule. While it may seem that Macbeth overemphasizes the importance of children it is worth noting that other characters remark on his childlessness. When Malcolm suggests that the grieving Macduff channel his grief into seeking revenge, Macduff declares simply, “He has no children” (4.3.216). Here his childlessness is used as a signifier of both his physical and emotional deficiency, implying that he lacks the capacity to experience the same depths of anguish that he has exacted upon Macduff. The play’s most vivid instance of separation from the feminine can be seen in the circumstances surrounding Macduff’s birth. The witches prophesy, “none of woman born Shall harm Macbeth” (4.1.80-81), and so Macbeth mistakenly believes that no man can escape femininity entirely due to the essential presence of woman in childbirth. Macduff embodies the perfection of masculinity because he represents the ultimate triumph of patriarchy over the process of reproduction. In fact the flaw of man as being “born of woman” (or other variants on the phrase) is referenced in the text no fewer than seven times. His birth by caesarian section removes the necessity of woman from the birthing process and disrupts the mother/child connection: woman becomes vessel in this usurpation of maternal power. French notes that Macduff, “not being ‘tainted’ by having arrived in the world through the female vagina, is ‘pure’ in a special way, and able to destroy the tyrant. Or perhaps, having been born bloody, he has an imperviousness to certain fears, or lack of certain delicacies, which make him able to defeat Scotland’s greatest warrior. (21) The graphic description of the event of being “from his mother’s womb Untimely ripped” (5.8.15-16) adds a note of violence characteristic of the bloody masculinity championed by the play as a requirement of manhood. Macbeth spends the majority of the play chasing the perfected state of masculinity. In the first descriptions we hear of him, he is praised as being “brave” (1.2.16) and “worthy” (1.3.106). In Act I, scene 2 Macbeth is called “valor’s minion”

34 (1.2.19), while his foe in battle, the traitorous Macdonwald who was the previous Thane of Cawdor, is labeled as a “rebel’s whore” (1.2.15). Despite these early accolades, after his encounter with the witches his masculinity is impugned at every turn. He is emasculated not only by the implications of the prophecy, but by his own wife, who refers to him as “a coward” and not “a man” (1.7.43/49). Time and time again she calls his manhood into question. At one point she accuses him of looking “green and pale”(1.7.37), this particular description of his symptoms was popularly employed to indicate what was known as wasting sickness, a severe form of anemia that was a common affliction amongst young women (Muir xxiii). In the scene in which Macbeth is confronted with Banquo’s ghost, she asks him, “Are you a man?” (3.4.59). When he replies that he is, she retorts that he is “unmanned in folly” (3.4.74). While the ghost is in the hall he trembles like “a baby of a girl” (3.4.107), and when it disappears he is “a man again” (3.4.108). She implicates him as being aligned with the feminine when she fears that he “is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness” (1.5.17) to carry out their plans to murder Duncan. Macbeth’s weakness aligns him with the unstable feminine principle making him as dangerous to the status quo as a woman: he is a contaminated man.

Uncontrollable Nature and the Supernatural Another threat to the established order which suffered from its close association with the feminine principle was nature; its conceptually precarious position in the cultural perspective of Early Modern England is a pervasive motif in Macbeth. The word “nature,” (or forms of the word, such as ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’), occurs more than twenty-five times within the text of the play. The very events of the play seem threatened at every turn by the various forces of nature. Though in its usage within the context of this play does not always have a malevolent connotation, nature, or things being in a natural state, is frequently referred to as the unfortunately imperfect state of being. The word nature occurs only after the appearance of the Weird Sisters, indicating their close bond, and does not appear again after the forces of the true king begin to turn the tide of battle by disguising themselves under the branches of trees of Birnam Wood. In an almost heavy-handed metaphor, the turmoil of a country threatened by feminine influence

35 is resolved by man’s taming (and destruction) of the forest which surrounds Dunsinane Castle. Here masculinity regains control of nature, which had been so disordered by feminine agency. It is a masculine appropriation of feminine fertility in order to return the both Scotland and her throne to patriarchal control untainted by feminine influence. The personification of the land as a woman, and reciprocally the view of woman as property/land are pervasive in the Western psyche. A king can be married to the land; likewise a woman can be plowed and seeded. Countries in particular are viewed in feminine terms. In Macbeth, Malcolm refers to Scotland in this way during Macduff’s meeting with him in England. MALCOLM: I think our country sinks beneath the yoke; It weeps, it bleeds, and each day a new gash is added to her wounds. (4.3.39-41) The implication here is that the weak and feminine nature of a country makes it vulnerable to conquest and destruction, and, as Macduff suggests, only the guiding hand of a true king can save her. In the text of Macbeth, “nature” is referred to as being an imperfection that produces negative effects. Its association with the feminine principle marks it as flawed and incomplete, having fallen short of the ideal of masculinity. Malcolm’s nature is “too kind,” Macbeth’s is “too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness” (1.5.18), and Lady Macbeth complains that the “compunctious visitings of nature” (1.5.46) will prevent her from her purpose. Banquo laments that his nature can’t protect him from the cursed thoughts that plague him (2.1.8). Sleep, “nature’s second course,” (2.2.38) prevents Duncan’s guards from performing their duties and eludes both Macbeth and his Lady. In these instances it is the evil of nature that prevents mankind from achieving their true potential. Nature’s association with the unknown represented another key factor in the negative connotation that the word had acquired. If the feminine aspect of nature made it a sphere of control which could, indeed should, be ruled by man, then it could also be dominated by other forces: supernatural forces. But as man represented the most powerful of earthly powers, any force with more power would have to be found in either heaven or hell. Since the benevolent actions of God were referred to as being divine, the word supernatural took on the implication of evil. And Macbeth is filled with

36 supernatural disruptions. The witches’ representation of superstitious, old knowledge was a danger to the new, enlightened knowledge of the patriarchal rule: one which required repression. The play begins in a storm conjured by the Sisters in the first scene. As the play progresses even more unnatural events begin to occur. “Night’s predominance” (2.4.8.) is established when the darkness blots out the light of the midday sun; the power of the masculine/light side of the binary is subdued by feminine/dark. Even the animals run amuck as supernatural forces turn the very earth on its ear. Predators become prey, and horses, the most noble of animals and the most subservient to men, become cannibals. The most significant example of the witches’ ability to disrupt the natural order can be seen in their elemental control of the air. The play begins during a thunderstorm that they have conjured through their ability to turn the fair into foul. They also reveal their ability to “Hover through fog and filthy air” (1.1.11). Each time the witches appear on the stage they vanish “as breath in the wind” (1.3.82), or “make themselves air” (1.5.4). James confirms the accuracy of this ability in Daemonologie, where he writes that witches are able to call upon their little devils and, “on a mighty winde, being but a naturall meteore, to transporte from one place to an other a solide bodie, as is comonlie and dalie seene in practice” (James I 38). Shakespeare also had another very real model for this world seized by darkness and natural disaster: a hurricane. On March 29 and 30, 1606, the North Sea and the British Isles were hit by the most devastating hurricane of a generation. Numerous accounts of its fury can be found in letters and diaries of the time. Reports of damage and mass casualties by accompanying storms came from as far away as France, Belgium, and Germany. The hurricane caused coastal waters to rise more than seven feet, more than eighteen ships were wrecked and their crews lost, thousands of houses and other buildings were blown down, and windmills were uprooted. The storm also delayed the arrival of Queen Anna’s brother, King Christian IV, who had planned a visit to his sister at the same time the hurricane hit. It was for his visit to Hampton Court that the first recorded performance of Macbeth had been arranged, and the hurricane forced the command performance to be postponed for several weeks. The massive destruction was heralded as God’s punishment on the wicked of England (Neill 248-250).

37 By attributing power over the air and weather to the witches, Shakespeare preys on the recent paranoia of the English public by representing the events of the natural world as being under the supernatural control of the witches. To restore order to a world drowning in the chaos created by these powerful supernatural/natural forces, it was imperative that both women and witches be recognized for the threats that they were. The threat of the feminine is overcome by its assignation to the dark side of the binary. Bovenschen believes that witches, became the victim of the relentlessly advancing domination of nature, and consequently the victim of the triumph of abstract reason, the formal synthesis of identity and non-identity. (Bovenschen 107) Through this process of fetishization, the mystical feminine power of the unknown was rendered non-threatening. By this process the witch, as the cultural representation of the discourse of commonality between woman and nature, becomes an image that seems more entertaining than fearful. Man’s domination of the mystical-woman insures both his supremacy over the natural world and the continued subjugation of women.

Witches or Wives The specific cosmology of Macbeth orders women into three specific categories based upon their threat to the patriarchy. The degree of this threat is directly proportional to their perceived agency and power as well as their willingness to conform to feminine and maternal norms. To this end three examples are provided spanning the full range of identities possible for a woman to embody: the witches represent the most dangerous and unstable incarnation of femininity, Lady Macbeth occupies the middle ground of a woman enclosed by marriage yet still transgressive, and Lady Macduff is presented as the dutiful, compliant subject of the patriarchy. The existence and nature of the agency of the witches in Macbeth would no doubt have been perceived by the audience of the day as not only plausible but a scenario with religious precedent. In her discussion of the Biblical underpinnings in Macbeth, Jane H. Jack highlights the strong parallel between the play and the biblical story of King Saul and the Witch of Endor (I Samuel 28). Saul, after having driven all of the witches,

38 mediums, and diviners out of his land, seeks a prophesy from a witch when he believes he is at risk of loosing his kingdom. Like Shakespeare’s text, the woman Saul calls upon is never referred to as a witch within the text, but chapter subtitles in several versions of the Bible refer to her as the “Witch of Endor”. What is known is that, as in Macbeth, the witch must call upon a male spirit who actually reveals the prophecy, and that both Macbeth and Saul are foretold the circumstances of their own demise. Both elicit the spiritual realm in order to secure their kingship, and in the case of Saul we are told explicitly that his death is due to the fact that he has consulted a power other than God for knowledge and aid. Those members of the audience familiar with the biblical version may likely have drawn the same conclusions from the actions of Macbeth. The witches of both stories cause no direct threat to and exert no pressure on the kings or their actions, and in both cases they have no power of their own to prophesy but exist in a kind of liminal state between worlds, answering to a higher male authority on both planes. Through this citation of a well known Bible story, the representation of the witch as a threat to the socio-political workings of the nation is successfully reiterated. It is interesting to note that neither Shakespeare, nor Holinshed, whose Chronicles is the primary source for Macbeth, ever refers to them as witches. Holinshed’s report calls them the Weird Sisters, initially describing them as “women in strange and wild apparel, resembling creatures of the elder world” (Paul 109). Later in the account they are referred to as “either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say) the goddesses of destiny, or else some nymphs or fairies, endued with knowledge of prophecy by their necromatical science” (110). These accounts seem to liken them to the Three Fates, sisters from Greek and Norse Mythology that controlled destiny. Other characters in the play call them “instruments of darkness,” “midnight hags,” “oracles” and the “juggling fiends,” yet none use the word witch. If naming legitimizes a being then Shakespeare’s failure to provide the Sisters with one strips them of their humanity; they are no more than the air into which they vanish. Yet this is the same air of mystery which bolters their connection with the dark side of the binary and links them to the realm of the supernatural. In fact the Sisters of Macbeth are perhaps the least human of the witches in Jacobean literature.

39 Their “unkempt” and “wild” appearance acts as an immediate signifier of their abject status. They have transgressed socially prescribed gender roles so far that they are almost unrecognizable. BANQUO: …What are these So withered , and so wild in their attire, That they look like th’ inhabitants o’ th’ earth, And yet are on ‘t? Live you, or are you aught That men may question? You seem to understand me By each at once her choppy finger laying Upon her skinny lips. You should be women And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so. (1.3.39-47) Shakespeare’s description is, in many ways, faithful to English witchcraft lore of the period. Reginald Scot, a prominent English witchcraft scholar in the Renaissance, reports that it was a well established fact that witches were “women which be commonly old, lame bleary-eyed, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles: poor, sullen, superstitious, and papists; or such as know no religion….They are lean and deformed, showing melancholy in their faces” (qtd. in Nostbakken 99). Yet it is their Scottish homeland and the strange influences of Scottish witch lore that Shakespeare emphasizes in order to increase their unknown natures, creating them an even greater threat to the social order. The land these sisters call home was, to the Early Modern English view, just as wild as that of the new world. Though Scotland and England were united by the Union of 1603, their new relationship was a new and tenuous one. The strained relations between the Catholics and Protestants made a peaceful, homogeneous relationship between the two kingdoms nearly impossible. Years of warring and occupation by the British had made the Scots hostile and suspicious of English rule. While in England, Scotland was still represented as being a wild and lawless country. In the grander scope of English Imperialism, “the Scottish Highlands and Gaelic Ireland in some ways acted as

40 models for the colonial experiments in America” (Halpern 52).26 By setting this royal play on the fringe of the empire, Shakespeare provides the perfect, wild background to locate his dark other: the witch. The stain of Scotland’s history as a conquered nation is borne by the Weird Sisters who become the native force within, doubling the Indian’s image of the native threat from without. The witches of Macbeth occupy an ambiguous location on the outskirts of society, and it is this very marginal status of the unknown that affords them their power. Shakespeare’s witches combine the familiar appearance of the English witch with the supernatural abilities of the Scottish witch to produce a new and more dangerous threat to the social order. Many of their actions are contradictory to accounts of the English witch as homebound, single practitioners who were simply the more disenfranchised members of a village. Daemonologie’s account of witches is more in line with witchcraft lore in Scotland than in England. Scottish witches were afforded more supernatural abilities than their English counterparts, and were believed to possess power over the elements, prophetic abilities, were often involved with necromancy.27 Unlike her English sisters, the Scottish witch was not a single practitioner, but plied her craft in groups or a coven.28 Another significant difference between the two can be seen in the degree of their agency. It was believed that English witches had no powers of their own except those given to them by their devils, who became their masters through a demonic pact, while Scottish witches relied on their devils only for the power of divination. The powers of Macbeth’s sisters are decidedly more Scottish in nature. Their pervasive control of the elements is visible in the highly atmospheric play, and, as in Scottish witch lore, they practice their craft in covens. The Weird Sisters act autonomously to cause storms and kill animals, but must rely on other supernatural powers in order to make their most significant predictions for Macbeth. In scene 4.1., when Macbeth calls upon them for another prophecy, the witches ask, “Say, if th’ hadst

26 For a more detailed exploration of British Imperialism in Scotland, see Chapter 2 – “1603-10: ‘Britaine is now, Britaine was of yore’” of Tristan Marshall’s Theatre and Empire or Chapter 3 – Encounters Between British and “Indigenous” peoples c. 1500-c. 1800” of Empire and Others, ed. Rick Halpern. 27 Necromancy, the power attributed to the Witch of Endor who raises the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel, technically refers to divination by conversing with the dead. 28 One of the few historical references to English covens occurs in the accusations of the Lancashire Witches. See Chapter 4 of this work for additional information on this case. 41 rather hear it from our mouths, /Or from our masters?” (4.1.62-63). Realizing that the witches are merely mouthpieces and not the source of true power, Macbeth demands that they call upon the spirits. While this incident is consistent with Scottish witch lore, in Macbeth it functions as yet another instance in which feminine agency is negated. The power of prophecy, their most definitive power within the text, is not truly within their control; Macbeth’s choice to rely on the masculine spirits removes the witches from the power structure. Nowhere in the text do the Witches, or the apparitions that they conjure, suggest any action to Macbeth: the details of his murderous plot are of his own imagining. Moreover, one of the most pivotal moments in the progression of Macbeth’s characterization is his decision to revisit the sisters in order to receive more advice. The witches are merely the adoring slaves of their masters - their familiars, whose continued calls must be answered, and the apparitions, which provide them with their access to the power of divination. The dubious connections between the witches and maternal power within the text are pervasive. In the first scene their identity as witches is solidified when they call for their familiars, Greymalkin and Paddock.29 In the specific cosmology of Jacobean England this slight reference would have inevitably conjured a connection to the suckling of their familiars by witches. By invoking this association with the means by which a witch reaffirms her relationship with the demonic, the maternal bond of breast-feeding is sullied. Thus the social chaos that arises within the play can be attributed, in part, to maternal failure. The witches also pervert the maternal by replacing the womb with the cauldron as the site of feminine creation. Instead of being filled with human life force, the witches’ cauldron contains death. Along with the parts and pieces of various small animals, it contains poisoned entrails (4.1.5), venom (4.1.8), and hemlock (4.1.26). These poisons are brewed with the maternal affronts of the “Finger of a birth-strangled babe/ Ditch- delivered by a drab” (4.1.29-30) and the blood of a sow which “hath eaten/ Her nine farrow” (4.1.64-65). Shakespeare uses the results of the least maternal scenarios of childbirth, an infant killed at birth and delivered by a whore and a mother who eats her

29 Greymalkin was used to refer to a gray cat, while Paddock was a common term for a toad. Later in scene 4.1 the familiar of the third witch is named as Harpier, otherwise known as a screech owl. 42 own children, as the generative substance in this perversion of the reproductive site. Nonetheless, their brew of death does produce three male forms: the armed head, the bloody child, and the crowned child. Macbeth, who “conjures” (4.1.50) the witches to produces these specters, is the symbolic father in this dark union, and its resulting progeny each foretell of the destruction of that father. The witches are also depicted as having power over masculine sexuality. In her plots against the master of the Tiger, the First Witch vows, “I will drain him dry as hay” (1.3.18), and that for nine times nine nights he will “dwindle, peak, and pine” (1.3.23). Her power to inflict impotence makes her a formidable opponent to the masculine hegemony of sexuality. The results of their upheaval of the natural order can be seen in women as well. Malcolm notes that the blood-thirst, which has spread throughout Scotland cannot help but “make our women fight” (4.3.166). He laments that the country is in such disarray that she “cannot be called our mother, But our grave” (4.3.165-166). The witches are not the only characters used to demonstrate the destructive power inherent in the feminine principle; the human women of the play are also implicated as sites of weakness with the potential to become a threat to the masculine order. Macbeth reveals the dangers that may arise from any woman who seeks to transgress her designated position as a submissive wife and mother. Lady Macbeth’s attempts to meddle in the affairs of the state, despite the fact that she engages in them under the auspices of aiding her husband, are a clear indication of her intention to transgress the recognized sphere of feminine influence. She further refuses to submit the masculine order when she disregards her duties as hostess and subject and murders the king who is a guest in her home. The most well known example of Lady Macbeth’s failure to embrace her socially mandated role as mother is her willingness to sacrifice her children to her masculine ambition. She reveals that she would bash in the skull of a child that suckled at her breast in order to succeed in their plot to kill Duncan. Her desire to “unsex” herself is a denial of her feminine nature and creates a sexual imbalance in the play that is not rectified until Malcolm, reporting her death in the final line of the play, positions himself, like his father before him, as both mother and father. Her request, LADY MACBETH: …Make thick my blood

43 Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake fell my purpose….(1.5.44-47) is nothing less than a prayer for the end of her menstrual cycle: an end to her feminine power of reproduction. Her request for the spirits to, “Come to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall” (1.5.48-49), is a perversion of the maternal which aligns her, and her resulting sexual ambiguity, with the witches. The king himself had a special interest in the issue of breastfeeding, du to the fact that he was not nursed by his devoutly Catholic mother, but by a stern Protestant woman by the name of Mistress Helen Litell. It was James’ contention that he came by his Protestantism by feeding on her breast milk. In his first speech before Parliament he proclaimed, “I thank God I sucked the milk of God’s truth with the milk of my nurse” (qtd. in Paul 389). But, this phenomenon of passing traits to children via breast milk had a dark side, too. Litell had a drinking problem, and it was believed that her contact with the young king was the cause of his “awkward gait, for he did not walk until he was five years old” (389). James, it seems, had reasons to both revere and fear breast milk for its power to either sustain or deform the material and moral fortitude of the body politic of the patriarchy. In the sleepwalking scene, Lady Macbeth exhibits characteristics not unlike those of a hysteric, the term employed by Dr. Jorden in his analysis of both Mary Glover and Ann Gunter. She manifests symptoms of cyclical thought patterns in her repetitive speech that occurs ten times in the 80-line scene. The sleepwalking and her obsessive- compulsive hand washing are both classic signs of a psychological break, and signify an attempt of her self-conscious mind to reconcile her rift with the natural patriarchal order Her attack of conscience is a double-edged sword; it marks her as a site of feminine weakness, incapable of holding up under pressure, and it is a punishment for her attempt to push the boundaries of her assigned gender role. Of all of the women in the play the only one to conform to the boundaries established by the forces of patriarchal rule is Lady Macduff. Unlike the brutal attitude of Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff’s only concern is for her children. Upon hearing the rumor of her husband’s death, she recognizes that her children are also in danger and

44 vows the she, like “a poor wren” (4.2.9) will fight to defend her young ones against “the owl” (4.2.11). Though Lady Macduff knows well that she will be forced to live “as birds do” (4.2.32) now that her husband is gone, she submits herself to the will of her monarch. In the hopes of preserving the lives of her children, she agrees that her husband was a traitor to the throne who deserved his fate and then submits herself to the mercy of the king. Once her child is murdered she no longer serves a purpose and is killed. In the end of the play all of the human women are dead, leaving us with only two options for the representation of the feminine; in Macbeth a wicked woman is a witch, and the only good woman is a dead one.

Conclusion Macbeth creates a world in which the masculine principle is over-valorized at the expense of the feminine principle, which is created as a site of disorder and abjection. James’ fascination with witches enabled him to rekindle the superstitious imaginations of his subjects. His engagement in the intellectual debate of the day, concerning matters of the occult, legitimized witchcraft as a significant and necessary field of discourse. Through his personal involvement with witchcraft trials, James re-enforced popular belief in the real and ever-present danger of witches, who represented a common enemy against whom both Scotland and England could rally. The representation of witches as a dangerous manifestation of the feminine served as bond to unite the fractious relations within the newly formed Jacobean empire struggling to differentiate itself from the memory of the long and successful rule of Queen Elizabeth. Shakespeare capitalized on this renewed public interest and fear in witches in his creation of Macbeth, depicting his witches as a cross between the witches of Scottish and English witchcraft lore. Shakespeare offers for his audience’s consideration three types of feminine models - the doting and servile Lady Macduff, the ambitious and scheming Lady Macbeth, and the mysterious Weird Sisters - in order to demonstrate the hazards of feminine influence. The play reinforces the hegemonic patriarchy by depicting woman and witch as the roots of chaos. In many ways, Macbeth is a reflection of the battle over the emerging national identity of Jacobean England. It represents a world in which rational masculinity is able to overcome the threat of feminine agency by repressing the natural and the supernatural.

45 Chapter Three – Gaining Familiarity in The Witch of Edmonton: Identifying and Enclosing

‘Tis all one to be a witch as to be counted as one. – Mother Sawyer in The Witch of Edmonton (2.1.124-125).

Introduction The Witch of Edmonton premiered at the Cockpit Theatre in the summer of 1621, and was performed by the company of players known as the Prince’s Men. The company had employed the services of several playwrights to create a script based on a recent, sensationalized witch trial. Indeed the title page of its first publication in 1658, authorship is attributed to “divers well-esteemed Poets; William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, &c. [sic].” While a handful of scholars, most notably T.S. Eliot, insist that the “et cetera” indicates the participation of additional unnamed authors, the majority of scholars agree that it was “a mere flourish on the part of the publisher” (Onat 98). Still others such as Joan Sargeaunt and F.E. Shelling believe that it may indicate that Queen Henrietta’s Men may have employed additional authors to provide additions to the script for their revival of the show in 1635. Though debate as to which author was responsible for which parts of the script seems to comprise the majority of scholarship on the play, it is generally agreed that Dekker was responsible for the Mother Sawyer plotline, while Ford is attributed with writing the Frank Thorney plot, and Rowley is credited with the scenes containing Cuddy Banks.30 As the play was an obvious attempt to capitalize on the real-life trial of Elizabeth Sawyer, the use of multiple authors seems likely to have sprung from the attempt of the Prince’s Men to have a script ready for production while the events of the trial were still fresh in the memory of popular culture. The play begins with the story of Frank Thorney, who must marry his lover, Winnifride, who is pregnant with his child. Soon after this union it is revealed that he has already been promised in marriage to another woman, Susan Carter. Eager to receive Susan’s dowry, as well as the continued blessing and inheritance of his own father, Frank

30 For a more through overview of the debate over the specifics of collaboration between authors see “The Problem of Authorship” in Onat’s Introduction to The Witch of Edmonton. 46 returns to Edmonton, with Winnifride disguised as his boy servant, and marries Susan. Plagued with guilt over his bigamy, he stabs Susan to death and accuses another of Susan’s former suitors of the murder. His guilt is eventually revealed and he is convicted of Susan’s murder. The second tragic plot line is that of Mother Sawyer’s journey from village outcast to confessed witch. The majority of the action in this plot revolves around her relations with the Devil who appears to her in the play as a Dog portrayed by an actor. It also traces the attempts of her fellow villagers to successfully accuse and convict her of witchcraft. The comic plotline concerns a young man named Cuddy Banks, the son of Old Banks, Sawyer’s most bitter enemy and one of the staunchest proponents of her conviction. Cuddy is a simpleton who spends much of the play organizing a morris dance.31 Cuddy innocently befriends the Devil/Dog, who is unable to cause him anything other than general annoyance because Cuddy fails to recognize his true nature. Dekker, Rowley, and Ford’s play is based primarily on the Rev. Henry Goodcole’s pamphlet, The Wonderful Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer a Witch, which provided an account of her interrogation, confession, conviction and subsequent execution. The play is considered to be an example of the genre of domestic tragedy that emerged in the Jacobean era.32 The play contains two primary tragic plot lines and is interspersed with scenes from a secondary plotline of a more comedic nature. David Atkinson discusses the distinctions between the two plot lines as well as the significance of their intersections. Other more recent criticism, such as that of David Stymeist, deals with the text as a dramatic account based on the real life trial of Elizabeth Sawyer. Authors such as Michael Hattaway and Richard Grinnellview view the play from a historical point and focus on it as an example of witch-hunts. Lastly, and most significant to this work is Diane Purkiss’ book The Witch in History, which provides a

31 The morris dance was a traditional English amusement which consisted of a specific set of choreography, but also was frequently the basis of a procession of dancers dressed as stereo-typical or iconic characters, as well as singers and musicians. Though associated with the traditions of the festival of fools popular in May-Day celebrations during the height of it popularity it was performed during other festivals. (See Nine Daies Wonder, Will Kemp’s account of his nine day long dance from London to Norwich.) Common characters included a hobby-horse, the Maid (often Maid Marian), the Friar, a Hero, a drummer, a Fool, and a Witch. For a more in depth look at the traditions of this ritual see Onat (298-304). 32 In her article Leonora L. Brodwin discusses “The Domestic Tragedy of Frank Thorney in The Witch of Edmonton,” while Viviana Comensoli explores the gender implications in Thorney’s bigamy in her articles, “Household Business: Domestic Plays of Early Modern England” and “Domestic Tragedy in The Witch of Edmonton”. 47 detailed examination of the concepts of truth and testimony employed in the play. Purkiss explores Sawyer’s trial and the evidence presented against her as a complicated dialogue that results in Mother Sawyer’s eventual acceptance of the “truth” of her identity as a witch. While I agree with Purkiss’ assessment of the performative aspects of Sawyer’s assumption of the identity of the witch, I will attempt to demonstrate that Sawyer’s internalization of the label occurs long before the trial process through the repeated hailings of her neighbors; that the villagers construct the identity of the witch in order to have a scapegoat to pursue and a binary opposite against which they could define their own identity. This chapter will investigate The Witch of Edmonton as a sort of social primer which capitalized on the populace’s fear of all things natural and mysterious by depicting the witch in a common, recognizable form: woman. Placing the danger of the unknown right next door increased the cultural paranoia of the supernatural; Mother Sawyer was representative of any number of older, dispossessed women that populated the outskirts of society. By making Sawyer a familiar figure, the text re-enforces the notion that all women are potential witches and as such must be enclosed by a masculine force in order to protect them from falling prey to the Devil’s machinations. The failed attempts to successfully enclose Sawyer are echoed by the failure of Frank Thorney to enclose either of his wives. The play also presented a new system of knowledges through which witches could be legally identified and which served to dispel older, “unenlightened” superstitions concerning the enclosure of witches. Yet while the legal means of prosecution began to rely on more “scientific” knowledge it remained the responsibility of the villagers to identify witches thereby nullifying the threat that they represented. I will begin with an examination of the hailing of Mother Sawyer as a witch and the circumstances that prompt her to assume that identity. In conjunction with an examination of the role of the witch in the morris dance, I discuss the performativity of the label of the witch. I compare this to the performativity of King James’ examination of Gillis Duncan, a real-life woman accused of witchcraft. Historically I will note specific changes in intellectual discourse and in the witchcraft laws of Early Modern England and their representation in the play. This chapter highlights the social

48 importance of enclosing the witch and the woman in order to secure one’s place within the successful patriarchal hierarchy. In the case of the witch this is accomplished through accusation and conviction; in the case of the woman it is accomplished through marriage. I examine the plotline of the bigamist, Frank Thorney, and the relationship between Mother Sawyer and the Dog as efforts to control the feminine principle. I suggest that the identifying and enclosing on the witch, and the woman as potential witch, secures the power of the patriarchal hegemony and the place of the individual with in that system.

The Identity of the Witch: Naming and Claiming Unlike the strange and mysterious Weird Sisters in Macbeth, there is little ambiguity in nature of Mother Sawyer’s identity. She is fully human, and yet undeniably a witch. Her personal history is not unknown by her fellow villagers, nor is her suffering at the hand of Old Banks. She is the faithful, theatrical representation of the archetype of the witch as she was known in Early Modern England. At first glance Mother Sawyer provides the ideal target for witchcraft accusation; she is an unmarried woman of little means, despised by her neighbors for her physical deformities and anti-social behavior, and she is a single practitioner.33 Mother Sawyer is a witch before she even appears to the audience. Her reputation of the community, indeed the very title of the play, marks her as the always/already abject. This process, which Althusser calls “hailing,” in which identity is assumed through a kind of negative calling, is the very subject of Mother Sawyer’s first scene. She complains that she is the victim of foul gossip and that it is this constant hailing, and not her true nature, that labels her. MOTHER: ….Some call me witch, And being ignorant of myself, they go About to teach me how to be one. True to her account the first person to speak to her, Old Banks, does call her a witch. Banks’ hailing is an attempt to assign the unknown to an established identity and thereby alleviate the threat to the natural order present in individuals who place themselves outside the social norms. Thus the process of hailing,

33 The term single practitioner refers to a witch who performs her craft as a solo endeavor and is not involved in group efforts or a member of a coven. 49 …does not merely repress or control the subject, but forms a crucial part of the juridical and social formation of the subject . The call is formative, if not performative, precisely because it initiates the individual into the subjected status of the subject. (Butler 121) By this logic it is Banks who creates the very monster whose presence is so unbearable to him. Yet this hailing succeeds on two levels – first, it legitimizes the subject by assigning her to a fixed state within the established social system, and second, it reaffirms the power of the “hailer.” In this way the subjective man retains his power as creator. But the title of witch, if by no other means than the security of attaining a fixed social position, provides the desperately disenfranchised Mother Sawyer a means of claiming power. Despite the fact that she knows it aligns her with the devil, she is willing to take on the title of witch if it can better her position. MOTHER: Abuse me! Beat me! Call me hag and witch! What is the name? Where and by what art learned? What spells, what charms or invocations May the thing called Familiar be purchased? (2.1.33-36) Sawyer is in dire need of agency, and the items that she seeks in this passage represent for her not signs of the occult but a means to power. Here the process of labeling the abject is cyclical. The empowered are complicit in the social oppression that causes the desperate lack of identity of the object. The hailing of the subject, while stabilizing the identity of both the hailer and the hailed, gives her just enough agency to be perceived as threatening and thus leaves the object open to continued hailing by the privileged. In the end it is Banks, among others, who creates the very witch that they end up hunting. For as Mother Sawyer knows, “ ‘Tis all one to be a witch as to be counted as one.” (2.1.124- 125). Just as Sawyer recognizes that assuming role of the witch is one of the few ways in which a woman in her position could gain power, the villagers recognize that it is a role as well, one which served as a source of popular entertainment. Mother Sawyer is not the only woman in town to be cast in the role of witch, as the morris dancers reveal during their planning session. “They say there are three or four in Edmonton besides

50 Mother Sawyer,” (3.1.14-15) says the First Dancer. Their abundance in the village gives one of the dancers the novel idea of asking a witch to play the part of the witch in their performance. The irony of suggesting that a reputed witch be cast in the role of the morris witch was not ignored by the authors. As one dancer cautions, “Faith witches themselves are so common nowadays that the counterfeit will not be regarded” (3.1.12- 13). This statement reveals not only the overwhelming abundance of real-life accused witches but also indicates the savvy of the audiences of the day who, according to this, would be able to distinguish between an actual practitioner and an actor portraying one. It also belies the audience’s thirst for what they perceive to be an accurate portrayal of a witch. By depicting Mother Sawyer in the form and social circumstances most familiar to their audience the authors were able to capitalize on this thirst for “truthful” representations of the witch. The dancers suggestion to incorporate a real witch into their production receives great support from the other participants and echoed the desire of popular culture to objectify the other. They all recognize that the spectacle of her presence in the dance would insure them an eager audience, as displaying the other provides the spectators with a unique opportunity to bond over their own sense of superiority: to revel in the security of their own identity which is provided by the exhibition of the shadowy other. Further the village dancers, by their physical performance of the abject other, alleviate their own anxiety over the destructive chaos that the witch represents to them. The parodic performance of the witch in the morris dance is not unlike the performance of race in minstrelsy. Both are methods by which those with power “may disavow – acknowledge and at the same time deny – difference at the level of the body; as a process of fetishism it seeks…to restore the wholeness and unity threatened by the sight of difference” (Barlow 1). They are a tactical misrepresentation on the part of the performers designed in order to depict the subjugated to a less threatening, comic role. But more curious than this act of displaying the other is the revealing concept that a witch would have to “act” the part of the witch. This suggestion betrays the notion of the stabilized identity of the other which the process of othering is intended to secure. It indicates that, on some level, that even the most common of village folk was aware that the label of “witch” was just that: a label. Ultimately, though the community despises

51 her, she is prized for her entertainment value. And though one timid dancer reminds them that inviting the witch means inviting the devil into their revelries, Cuddy, for one, is willing to risk it because, as he maintains, “Well, I’ll have a witch. I have loved a witch ever since I played at cherry-pit” (3.1.19-20). Cherry-pit was a children’s game of the day that involved tossing stones into a small hole. Cuddy’s vague sexual innuendo here is not insignificant and hints at the connection between sex and othering. Both are institutions employed by the patriarchal hegemony to ensure masculine superiority and the objectification of those (feminine) characters against which normalcy and supremacy were defined. After Mother Sawyer is taken into custody for witchcraft, she does try to resist the hails of “witch” from her accusers. When Sir Arthur calls her a “secret and pernicious witch” (4.1.110) during her trial, Sawyer laughs at the thought. She replies, “A witch! Who is not? Hold not that universal name in scorn then” (4.1.116-117). She then reminds them of the wealth of other persons more powerful and malevolent than herself: whores whose sexual powers lead men astray, lechers who prey on children, and nobles who prey on the common folk and grow rich off of the labor of others. These people, she claims have more power to bewitch and destroy than she. JUSTICE: Yes, yes; but the law Casts not an eye on these. MOTHER: Why then on me Or any lean old bedlam? Reverence once Had wont to wait on age. Now an old woman Ill-favored grown with years, if she be poor Must be called bawd or witch. Such so abused Are the coarse witches, t’other are the fine, Spun for the devil’s own wearing. (4.1.132-139) In her reply Mother Sawyer reveals the statistical truth of the conditions of those accused of witchcraft. Though noted witchcraft historians such as Alan Macfarlane, Keith Thomas, Christina Larner and Anne Barstow have explored the reasons why the majority of those

52 prosecuted for witchcraft were, (80 percent34), were women, and among them a majority of those were, as Sawyer suggests, old, unmarried, and poor. Mother Sawyer’s claim that others are guilty of far worse crimes elicits a surprisingly honest response from the Justice. He aknowledges that the law is uninterested in pursuing the crimes of those in power. This may be read as an indictment on the part of the playwrights of a society more interested in condemning Sawyer as a witch, than Thorney, an admitted bigamist and murderer. The Justice’s reply reveals the unmarked35 status of the general population. This state of relative invisibility provides these other dubious characters, noted by Sawyer in her defense, with the ability to escape from the field of social judgment. In contrast, cloaked in the highly visible representation of the witch image, Mother Sawyer seems to be the only victim available for persecution. Her status as marked simultaneously defines and destroys her, just as the normative attributes of her accusers allows their actions to remain unexamined and elevates them in the hierarchical order. The marking of the witch, it follows, was the inevitable duty of their fellow villager as it allowed even women to participate in the patriarchal agenda of othering. Barstow discusses the idea that, in an attempt to “outdo” other members in a group of oppressed, one must scorn those more marginalized than them: “the poor attacked those even poorer, the marginalized women attacked those women even further out of power than they” (Barstow 10). By engaging in the hegemonic subjugation if other women, female accusers place themselves on the side of the oppressor, and in doing so were able to protect themselves from being identified as a witch. The dangers of failing to identify the witch and her transgressive actions can be seen in the character of Cuddy. Cuddy knows that his own father, Old Banks, has accused Mother Sawyer of being a witch, but Cuddy refuses to recognize her as a threat and even goes so far as to beg for her help with his love life. When he comes to Sawyer seeking a love potion to seduce Katherine Carter, she asks if he is afraid to deal with a reputed witch. He replies,

34 See Anne Barstow’s Witchcraze and Alan Macfarlane’s Witchcraft in Tudor and Stewart England for a more in depth exploration of witchcraft statistics and the possible explanations for the preponderance of similarities between those accused. 35 See Introduction for a discussion of Phelan’s concept of the “marked” and “unmarked” 53 CUDDY: …Witch or no witch, you are a motherly woman, and though my father be a kind of God-bless-us, as they say, I have an earnest suit to you. And if you’ll be so kind to ka [sic] me one good turn, I’ll be so courteous as to kob [sic] you another. (2.1.206-211) By his association with her, he leaves himself open to torture at the hands of the Devil/Dog. Cuddy’s failure to participate in the widespread effort to identify Mother Sawyer as a witch strengthens the depiction of Cuddy as a simpleton, unable to recognize the danger that is so clear to the rest of the village. Further, the failure to other the witch leaves her free to inflict her maleficia on still other victims. In the case of Mother Sawyer, the failure of the villagers to successfully identify her as a witch at the first interrogation sets her free to encourage the Devil/Dog to bewitch Anne Ratcliffe, who is driven to kill herself.

Knowledge and Familiarity One of the most significant changes in witchcraft prosecutions in England occurred during the rule of King James; jurisdiction over witchcraft cases was transferred from the church courts to civil courts. In an attempt to demonstrate the authority of the crown over the church James made himself the ultimate legal authority on witchcraft. This transfer resulted in the dramatic lowering of executions of accused witches and a higher degree of standardization of the court legal proceedings. Practices such as “secret sessions, withholding of the source of charges, denial of counsel, acceptance of evidence from prejudiced sources, lack of cross-examination, passing of indeterminate sentences, [and] assumption of guilt,” designed to protect the church were abolished (Barstow 49). The final county to remove cases concerning witches from ecclesiastical courts was Essex, which complied in 1620, the year before The Witch of Edmonton was written. Another significant change in these prosecutions came in the form of the Witchcraft Act of 1604, enacted by King James, which replaced the previous Act of 1563 passed by Queen Elizabeth. The new act had much more severe statutes on the

54 sentencing of convicted witches36 and more rigorous standards concerning the types of acceptable proof. Torture was not employed in England, as it was in Continental witchcraft trials, as a means of eliciting information from the accused (Sharpe 26).37 This made the interrogation of the witchcraft trials and the act of confession much more significant in the complicated process of securing a conviction. James’ efforts to base the prosecution of witches on a rational, scientific system was, in part, his attempt to be viewed as an enlightened ruler who would not condemn on the basis of superstition or religious heresy. As a result it was not uncommon that some of the accused were acquitted on the basis of lack of “verifiable” proof. The separation of the two scenes of interrogation (4.1 and 5.3) and Mother Sawyer’s temporary reprieve is, according to Goodcole’s pamphlet, not only an accurate account of Elizabeth Sawyer’s prosecution, but may also have been a reflection of the rising number of acquittals of accused witches. The authors use this momentary reprieve in the structure of the plot to give the audience further proof of Mother Sawyer’s guilt by inserting a scene immediately after the first interrogation scene in which she is seen kissing and suckling the Devil/Dog and bidding him to drive Anne Ratcliffe to take her own life. As discussed in the previous chapter’s account of Mary Glover, James made an effort to remain personally involved in trials that received significant public attention, going to great lengths to imbue their proceedings with rational, scientific methods of proving the guilt or innocence of accused witches. Held in public, due to their recent transfer to the secular court system, the witchcraft trials became a form of theatrical entertainment. Another of James’ more famous interventions concerns the trail of Gillis Duncan during the North Berwick trials of 1597. During the court proceedings, which James had traveled to attend, Duncan carefully detailed the events of her story, but her description was not enough to satisfy the monarch. He demands that she perform the demonic “dance” which had been the cause of suspicion for her neighbors who believed her possessed. The request for her to enact the identity that she has chosen is similar to Cuddy’s suggestion that Mother Sawyer act the role of the witch after she has denied being one, despite the repeated hailings of the other villagers. Her performance strips her

36 The Act of 1604 made all crimes previously punishable by a life sentence with a sentence of execution, and crimes previously punished by a one-year sentence with a life sentence. See (Macfarlane 15). 37 The one exception to this can be found in the witch-hunts of a Rev. Matthew Hopkins in 1645. 55 of the power of subjectivity by reinforcing her position as object. By assuming the role of the seer, James re-asserts his power to compel the actions of his subjects. At the moment of her performance Duncan surrenders the image of the witch, a position of social threat, and is forced to assume the more familiar role of entertainer. In her analysis of this interaction Purkiss notes, …she exists now only to please him, to offer him wonder and strangeness. James is the master of the witches who had threatened to master him. He restores the hierarchy and order threatened by the witches. …[He] turns the forensic and rhetorical proceedings of the court in to a strictly ideological drama….This affirms royal power as the privileged spectator and interpreter of a spectacle offering otherness only to be dispelled by legitimate authority. (200) This transformation of the court proceeding into public spectacle can also be seen in The Witch of Edmonton. By including the specific workings of the real-life trial into this drama, the average citizen was afforded an important glimpse into the changes made to the court system on behalf of the advances of the Enlightenment. The play offers a guide to the nature of appropriate witchcraft proof and a reaffirmation of the hierarchical superiority of “scientific knowledge.” Sir Arthur and Old Banks call for a local Justice to formally accuse Mother Sawyer, who seems widely acknowledged about the village as a witch, of witchcraft. They cite as evidence the fact that, in accordance with local superstition, that “she came running as if the devil had sent her in a barrel of gunpowder” (4.1.42-45) when they burned a handful of thatch from the roof of her house. According to popular witch lore the proof that they offer was often used in the accusation of witches (Sharpe 53). They also accuse her of bewitching Old Banks into repeatedly kissing the ass of his cow.38 Yet the Justice ignores both forms of popular proof presented, despite the assertion of the

38 The kissing of the Devil’s ass was an accepted sign of a witch pledging her allegiance to him. “In many illustrations the posterior itself contains a face, and in many others, the shape of a toad or other animal” (Kors 155). A similar case concerning a dun cow is accounted in Gifford’s A Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcraft. 56 First Man that, “This thatch is as good as a jury to prove she is a witch” (4.1.31). The Justice chides the men for bringing in such unacceptable accusations, saying: JUSTICE: …Unless your proofs come better armed, instead of turning her into a witch, you’ll prove yourselves stark fools. (4.1.49-51) He represents the new, enlightened authority encouraged by James that valued scientific evidence above local superstition. The initial inability of the villagers of Edmonton to provide appropriate evidence threatens to depict them as intellectually inferior as the witch herself. Their reliance on ‘naïve’ knowledges denotes a class difference between the enlightened Justice, who embraces new, ‘official’ knowledges, and the superstitious town folk. Further, the Justice takes on the role of protector of the weak by championing Mother Sawyer when Old Banks begins to beat her, warning him, “Go, go; pray vex her not. She is a subject, and you must not be judges to the law to strike her as you please” (4.1.73-74). His acknowledgement of her as a subject accomplishes two significant goals. First, it demystifies the threat of the witch, and second it reaffirms the absolute power of the monarch by proving that even the most transgressive individuals are subject to his laws. This dismissal by the Justice reflects the legal realities concerning proof in witchcraft trials. The Witchcraft Act of 1604 states that there are only four forms of acceptable proof in cases which called for a sentence of execution: confession by the accused, accusation by another witch, the discovery of a witchmark on the body of the accused, or two persons claiming to have witnessed the accused making a Satanic pact or “entertaining” the Devil or a familiar (Macfarlane 18). The Witch of Edmonton adheres to the real-life standards concerning the burden of proof in witchcraft prosecutions and shows the audience the futile results of presenting insufficient proof in witchcraft accusations. The character of Mother Sawyer is not unaware of the ways in which the standards of proof specified in the Act of 1604 benefit her. In her last interaction with the Devil/Dog, after their falling out, the Dog announces that she will either be burned or hanged when she is caught. Mother Sawyer defiantly responds, MOTHER: I’ll confess nothing,

57 And not confessing, who dare come and swear I have bewitched them? I’ll not confess one mouthful. (5.1.68-70) After her recent exoneration she better understands the system of prosecution in which she is engaged. So much so that at the end of her first interrogation, when Anne Ratcliffe asks if she is Mother Sawyer, she responds braggingly, “No, I’m a lawyer” (4.1.197), indicating that she possesses the knowledge necessary to manipulate the legal process. But despite her defiant words to the contrary during an argument with the Dog, it is ultimately her own confession that serves as the grounds for her conviction. Though she has been accused of all manner of maleficia - blighting crops, spoiling beer, causing the premature birth of a litter of piglets, and causing butter not to churn, causing Frank Thorney to kill Susan Carter and of causing the suicide of Anne Ratcliffe - the Justice will not allow her execution until she admits her dealings with the Devil. After a series of interrogations Mother Sawyer relents to their badgering saying, MOTHER: These dogs will mad me….pray torment me not; my conscience is settled as it shall be. All take heed how they believe the devil; at last he’ll cheat you. (5.3.41, 46-48) In her confession she is stripped of agency by her own assertion that she had been cheated by the devil. Because her choice of words is important in the process of confession, despite this first admission of her association with the devil, she is prodded to further her statement. She angrily responds, MOTHER: Yet again? Have I scarce breath enough to say my prayers, And would you force me to spend that in bawling? Bear witness. I repent all former evil; There is no damned conjuror like the devil. (5.3.49-53) Here we see the necessity for the confession to include not only an admission of guilt but a sense of contrition on the part of the accused as well. The witch’s confession was performative, consisting of an utterance that must occur in a prescribed manner. It is at once a declaration of “truth” and a legal admission of one’s guilt. As such it is the

58 ultimate act in which a witch performed her identity and in many cases confession served as her final performance. Another form of acceptable proof arises when Mother Sawyer is discovered by the villagers as she fights with the Devil/Dog after her first interrogation. Old Ratcliffe and Old Banks realize their good fortune in stumbling upon Sawyer cavorting with her familiar and rush to seize her for her second interrogation. Witnessing a witch’s relationship with her familiar was considered acceptable proof because it was one of the strongest physical demonstrations of both the power of the Devil and the complicity of the witch. The association between the witch and her familiar was well known in England and considered to be one widely recognized forms of verifiable proof of a witch’s guilt. In her attempts, early in the play, to gain the power inherent in the witch identity of the witch, Mother Sawyer tries to exploit the connection between the witch and the familiar. MOTHER: …I have heard old bedlams Talk of familiars in the shape of mice, Rats, ferrets, weasels and I wot not what, That they have appeared and sucked, some say, Their blood. But by what means they came Acquainted with them I’m now ignorant. (2.1.109-114) In spite of her professed lack of knowledge on the subject, she is fully aware that they are a means to harnessing the power and agency possessed by the Devil for her own personal agenda. The ability of the Devil to transform himself into a familiar is predicated on the inherent weakness of all of those below man in the hierarchical order. The Dog in The Witch of Edmonton reveals the Devil’s powers of disguise when he admits to Cuddy that he has taken on the form of the young woman who had bewitched the simpleton. The Dog goes on to admit that he is not only capable of transforming into a woman, but a cat, hare, frog or “Any poor vermin”(5.1.127). Note here that women fall into the same category as the rest of the animals and “poor vermin.” Though not mentioned in the interrogation scenes of the dramatic text, there remained one substantial proof of Mother Sawyer’s guilt: the witchmark. Though the discovery of Sawyer’s witchmark does not occur in the dramatic text, numerous

59 references are made to the fact that the Dog suckles from Mother Sawyer. It occurs in their first meeting and serves to solidify the demonic pact between them. DOG: Art mine or no? Speak or I’ll tear- MOTHER: All thine. DOG: Seal’t with thy blood. (Sucks her arm; thunder And lightening) See, now I dare call thee mine. For proof, command me. Instantly I’ll run To any mischief; goodness can I none. (2.1.152 –156) In his pamphlet detailing the events of the real-life trial of Elizabeth Sawyer, Reverend Henry Goodcole reported that after a thorough physical examination of the accused inspectors located, “a thing like a teat, the bigness of the little finger which was branched at the top like a teat and seemed as though one had sucked it, and that the bottom thereof was blue and the top of it was red” (Rowley 140). This description corresponds to source material of the time, which also suggested that the marks could also be small “red spots like fleabiting” (Sharpe 120). It was also believed that the marks were often difficult to see and might be hidden by a cunning witch. Thus diligent and repeated searches of a witch’s body were demanded if no evidence was found in an initial search (119-120). The physical proof of the body was considered undeniable and scientific and at the same time it provided a need for male colonization of the female body. The specific target of women for their biological difference to men was apparent in this “inversion of a natural female function” (Barstow 129). The maternal nurturing that largely defined the social role of women was turned against them, as it became the new physical, empirical mark of demonic association. Issues concerning childbirth and care fell within the sphere of woman’s knowledge, far from the control of men. The harnessing of breast-feeding as a means of Satanic intimacy vilified the maternal sphere and bolstered the new knowledge espoused by the patriarchy in which the identity of the witch was hopelessly entangled with the identities of woman and mother. Further, it was the vehicle of the breast and not the concept of nurturing that represented the potential threat of Satanic control. Like Mother Sawyer, Cuddy has given aid to and cared for the Dog. Cuddy affectionately declares to the Dog, “You shall not starve, Ningle Tom, believe that” (3.2.143), and then proceeds to list the endless types of

60 food that he could provide for his new friend. Yet despite the fact that he, like Mother Sawyer, provides the Devil/Dog with sustenance, he is not accused of witchcraft, even after the other villagers discover his relationship. In this it is the intimate, maternal nature of the suckling process that is the deciding factor which determines whether or not one’s feeding of the devil constitutes being labeled a witch. In addition to the established legal discourse concerning witchcraft accusations, the communal discourse was a powerful force in the identification of the witch. In some ways the court of public opinion was much more severe than the legal system. Rumor was a powerful means of enclosing a witch and, unlike the state, required no persuasive proof. In The Witch of Edmonton the act of gossip becomes a means of reinforcing the masculine values of the status quo. When we first encounter Mother Sawyer, she complains that she is plagued by the “filth and rubbish of men’s tongues” (2.1.6) which has accused her of witchcraft. The label of witch, and the resulting social discrimination imposed on her by her fellow villagers, is so powerful that she actively seeks a bargain with the Devil in order to avoid their relentless torments. The ideals of marriage and fidelity are also policed by gossip as can be seen in the actions of the young men who torture Cuddy because he is a bastard. Likewise, it is the “country whispers” (1.1.82) of Winnifride’s pregnancy that prompts Sir Arthur to ensure that she is married to the father of her child, Frank Thorney. FRANK: Thou needst not Fear what the tattling Gossips in their cups Can speak against thy fame : thy childe shall know Who to call Dad now. (1.1.2-4) In these cases, the discursive practice of communal conversation is re-harnessed by the hegemony in order to perpetuate socially appropriate behavior. Rumor and gossip were employed in the pursuit of a stabilized society in which weaker individuals, such as women and children, who were more susceptible to the forces of evil, were enclosed within the sphere of power of a stronger force: man.

61

Marriage and Enclosure The Witch of Edmonton weaves together the witchcraft of Mother Sawyer with the marriages of Frank Thorney, juxtaposing the problem of the unknown with the solution of enclosure. Enclosure was the preferred Early Modern answer to a number of cultural threats: colonization for the threat of nature, othering and execution for the threat of the witch, and marriage for the woman as potential witch. Each of these forms of enclosure establishes patriarchal dominance over the menacing, dark side of the binary. The resulting hegemonic power is heightened by the commodification of the subjected. The rise of the market economy and the efforts of colonization transformed the life-giving and sustaining earth into mere property, in much the same way that women are transformed into property by the institution of marriage. Women were valued for what they could bring into a marriage through dowry, inheritance, or reproductive potential. The convention of the dowry diminished the status of women who were considered to be, in many ways, an economic drain on a household. The notion that a husband should be compensated monetarily for taking on a wife reduces marriage to process to a transaction as simple as the purchase of land: one in which goods and money are exchanged. Women were legally considered only slightly above land or livestock in terms of their role as male possessions. Upon marriage a woman was labeled as feme covert (Reis 102), a term which translates as “covered woman”. This term seems particularly appropriate on two levels. First, the legal rights of the wife were “covered” under the rights of the husband; she could neither own property, nor earn wages, nor sign contracts. Secondly, the sexual implication of the husband literally covering the woman refers again to the idea that sexual dominance is inherent in the union. Controlling the sexuality of one’s wife insured the notion of patrilineal succession and relieved male anxiety over the threat of women becoming the dominating power in the reproductive process. This concept of male anxiety over his reproductive capacity is well explored by Joan Pong Linton, who expounds on the importance of virginity in the enclosure of women and in the masculine appropriation of feminine reproduction. She writes, The virgin is instantaneously and permanently possessed by her husband, who becomes a father

62 by her. Her maternal resources are thus appro- priated for the reproduction of the status quo, pre- empting her emergence as a threat to the social order. (165) Controlling the maternal both stabilizes the social order and alleviates masculine sexuall anxieties. Just as chastity was the governing concept of marriage, virginity was the pre- requisite. The sacred nature of virginity was not a new concept; its origins can be found in nearly every pre-Christian religion and can trace its roots in Western culture at least as far back as the cults of Artemis and Diana. This can be seen when Frank Thorney praises Susan Banks for her perfection that makes her like “Diana herself” (2.2.98). What begins to change is the value of virginity. In previous times virginity is valued as a noble state in and of itself. The Early Modern era modifies this concept so that the state of purity is prized for its availability to be conquered or spoiled. Explorers often reputed land in the New World as being “virgin in nature” or “virgin territory.” The pristine nature of these new discoveries was essential because ultimately the fate of these lands was to be plundered by their new English lords. The binary parallel between land and woman as virgin fields of conquest and colonization can be seen in the Frank Thorney plotline of The Witch of Edmonton as well. Winnifride expresses her undying gratitude to Frank Thorney, “who had the conquest of my maiden love” (1.1.33). Here we can see that even this noble sounding woman is depicted as having a lust that she could not control. Later in the same scene she encounters Sir Arthur and it is discovered that the two were lovers before she had been with Frank Thorney. However her guilt is tempered by her repentance when she refuses to continue her illicit relationship with Sir Arthur now that she is married; she bemoans the fact that she was unable to present her husband with the “the dower of a virginity” (1.1.161), but vows that she will not taint the “purity of holy marriage” (1.1.207-208). She too has internalized the cultural view that marriage as an enclosure in which women can be redeemed for their licentious behavior. She refuses to be intimate with Sir Arthur, vowing, “I will change my life from a loose whore to a penitent wife”(1.1.191-192). Winnifride believes that she will be able to “unmark” herself through her participation in

63 the patriarchal re-enforcing institution of marriage. Finally, the concept of exchanging virginity for monetary gain is repeated when the Justice rules that Sir Arthur should pay Winnifride a good sum of money for lying to Old Thorney about his son’s marital status. Despite the given reason, it seems clear to the audience that he is paying for having taken her maidenhead. In the first scene of The Witch of Edmonton, we see an example of the “business” (1.1.1) of marriage. In the union with Frank Thorney both Winnifride and her unborn child are legitimized, and in return Frank is rewarded monetarily. Ultimately it is his misuse of the “business” of marriage that leads to his downfall. In this first scene Frank receives a dowry for Winnifride from both her father and Sir Arthur (who, it is later revealed may have made this offer of money to avoid the discovery that he was Winnifride’s first lover). Immediately, Frank takes action to hide his new marriage from his father, who has threatened him with the loss of his inheritance if he should marry anyone other than Susan Banks. His forced marriage to Susan provides Frank with even more wealth since he receives not only his own inheritance but a generous dowry of land and cash from Old Banks. But when Winnifride reminds him that his newfound wealth is “foul ill-gotten coin,/ Far worse than usury or extortion” (3.2.20-21). Frank angrily replies, FRANK: Let my father then make the restitution Who forced me take the bribe. It is his gift And patrimony to me; so I receive it. He would not bless, nor look a father on me, Unless I satisfied his angry will When I was sold, I sold myself again – Some knaves have done’t in lands, and I in body – For money, and I have the hire. (3.2.22-29) Here he implies that he is not to blame for his bigamy, but rather he has been forced to these actions in order to secure his own place in the patrilineal succession of his family. By insinuating that he has no more agency in the process than that of a piece of land he tries to assert his innocence. He is extremely resentful that he has been assigned to the role of property, the role usually assumed by the woman within a marriage. According to

64 the authors, the disruption of the power structure of marriage, in which the man is removed from power and commodified as woman/land, results in the chaos of bigamy. Considerably less sympathy is allotted by the authors to Susan, who is not only deceived into becoming a second wife, but is later killed by Frank in an attempt to assuage his guilt and free him from the sin of bigamy. In an attempt at an apology to Susan before he murders her, Frank admits some of his own culpability by telling her, “Your marriage was my theft, for I espoused your dowry, and I have it” (3.3.34-35). But his admission of his guilt is overshadowed by her own repeated insistence that she deserves to die. After Frank stabs Susan the first time she says, SUSAN: And I deserve it. I’m glad my fate was so intelligent. ‘Twas some good spirit’s motion. Die? Oh,’twas time! How many years might I have slept in sin? Sin of my most hatred too, adultery! (3.3.39-43) Susan has internalized the cultural view that she has no value outside of a monogamous marriage. Though she has no idea that her husband is a bigamist she takes the blame for this sin on herself. And she is not alone in this sentiment; Frank also places some of the blame on her. When Susan asks why Frank is going to kill her he responds, “Because you are a whore” (3.3.27). His indiscretion marks her as a sexual deviant, as though she alone is culpable for any act of adultery with in the marriage – even if she is not involved. Even her own father believes that she is responsible for her own demise. Having discovered his murdered daughter’s body, Old Banks denigrates her too, calling her a “Forgetful slut!” (3.3.104), and walks away with Frank, leaving Old Thorney to tend to her body. Though Susan is the only character involved in the bigamous triangle who is unaware of her plight, she alone is marked sexually for her perceived misbehavior. The play also provides a parallel for the concept of marriage as a class enforced union. When Winnifride disguises herself as Frank’s boy servant in order to travel with him, Susan makes a similar analogy of their relationship. She begs the “boy” to take care of her husband while they are away. Citing the close relationship that she knows can develop between a man and his servant when they are on the road, Susan asks that, “Thou mayst be servant, friend and wife to him./ A good wife is them all” (3.2.73-74). Here, in

65 a speech fraught with irony considering the true identity of the “boy,” Susan reveals that the power structure of marriage is much like that of servitude in which one of a lower class is compelled to care for the needs of an individual of a higher class. To further the analogy, she offers Winnifride a jewel to seal the union. The institution of marriage not only enclosed women, but was also employed as an institution that controlled the agency of the witch. According to witch lore of the time, the pact between the witch and the Devil was known as a marriage. Like a human marriage, this twist on the holy sacrament was sealed by the witch swearing an oath of fidelity to the Devil. Their union was consummated either by sexual intercourse, by the witch kissing the Devil’s ass, or by allowing the Devil to suck blood from her witch’s teat (Barstow 53-54 and Kors 155). As in a human marriage, the woman is not only dominated physically and sexually. The powers of the witch are not her own; she must rely on her demonic mate, or her familiars, to carry out her maleficia. Mother Sawyer soon discovers that, despite her vows, the Devil is in no way compelled to carry out her wishes. By the end of the play Mother Sawyer is no more than a pawn in the Devil’s games. Even at the height of her powers, after her acquittal she complains, MOTHER: Still wronged by every slave, and not a dog Bark in his dame’s defense? I am called witch, Yet am myself bewitched from doing harm. Have I given myself up to thy black lust Thus to be scorned? Not see me in three days! (5.1.1-5) Though the Devil/Dog does bewitch Anne Ratcliffe at Mother Sawyer’s request, he refuses on a number of other occasions to bring any direct harm to Old Banks, the true aim of Sawyer’s revenge schemes. He abandons her for days at a time, leaving her powerless in his absence, and when he is present he is not so much compelled by her requests for maleficium as he is driven by his own malicious whims. His presence in the Frank Thorney plot is not at all connected to his dealings with Mother Sawyer and he chooses to associate with Cuddy at her expense. When she realizes how little power she has attained by assuming the role of witch, she begins to resent her union with the Devil. Despite her efforts, she has attained no more power than an average housewife.

66 In addition to ascribing all of the powerful magic of the witches to the masculine domain of the devil, this union encloses what was viewed as excessive, feminine sexual urges. In a titillating display of spectacle, the audience witnesses one of the sexual encounters between Mother Sawyer and her devil, Tom the Dog. This scene would have been particularly vivid and disturbing to the audience because this scene is not merely recounted, but performed in full view of the audience. MOTHER: I am dried up With cursing and with madness, and have yet No blood to moisten these sweet lips of thine. Stand on thy hind-legs up. Kiss me, my Tommy, And rub away some wrinkles on my brow By making my old ribs to shrug for joy Of thy fine tricks….Let’s tickle. (4.1.167-173) Though we see little more than kissing and embracing before they are interrupted by the entrance of Anne Ratcliff, this speech is so rife with sexual innuendo that their intent seems clear. Their actions are even more devious in light of the fact that the Devil appears in the form of a dog, reducing the encounter to a bestial urge. The link between the image of the lusty woman and the witch can also be seen when Cuddy goes to Mother Sawyer for a love potion. Cuddy insists that the wealthy yeoman’s daughter has “bewitched” him (2.1.231), and claims that he “saw a little devil fly out of her eye” and pierce him in the heart (2.1.231-232). Here the perceived insatiable sexual desire of women renders even innocent virgins susceptible to accusations of witchcraft. Cuddy attributes his beloved’s romantic prowess to a satanic association, thus negating her personal agency. When Mother Sawyer claims that the girl could be won to his affections, Cuddy replies in an aside, “I think she’ll prove a witch in earnest” (2.1.241), implying that by reciprocating his feelings for her she could be identified as a witch. The sexual deviance of the witch is perceived to have a kind of contagious quality, making her very existence a threat to any woman. The men of the village recognize this and, fearing for their own enclosed women, demand that she be taken care of.

67 SECOND MAN: Rid the town of her, else all our wives will Do nothing else but dance about other country maypoles. THIRD MAN: Our cattle fall, our wives fall, our daughters fall and our maidservants fall; and we ourselves shall not be able to stand if this beast be suffered to graze amongst us. (4.1.12-18) It is as though even the presence of a witch in the village might cause otherwise virtuous women to forget their marriage vows and seek sexual gratification from someone other than her husband. The weak moral fiber that comprised women placed them in constant danger of falling prey to their baser desires and succumbing to demonic power. The reference to men being unable to stand is, considering the context, more than likely a reference to the fact that witch’s were frequently accused of causing impotency in males.39 In this example of Mother Sawyer’s maleficium is felt most strongly by those with lower hierarchical standing than men; women and animals are killed, while men, made of sturdier stock, are only affected on a sexual level. That is not to say that the effects of maleficium were insignificant to men – after all, every victim cited by the Third Man is the legal possession of a man. In fact, the hierarchical inferiority of women makes Mother Sawyer’s successful attacks on her betters even more significant. It is the very act of daring to affect those in power that marks the witch as transgressive. Still, despite the alleged powers of Mother Sawyer, she is still not granted the classification of human and is referred to here as a mere “beast.” Mother Sawyer sought the label of witch in order to gain the power to rise above the hegemonic oppression that she faced. Yet, in order to attain these powers she must submit herself to the same patriarchal system that had so viciously maligned her. Her agency is an illusion, and her pact with the Devil/Dog provides her with nothing other than the means by which the community can legally identify her as a witch and punish her accordingly. Ultimately the threat of the witch - that of a woman with agency - is an empty one: even the label of “witch” is a form of enclosure in which a woman’s identity is legally recognized only by her relationship to a man.

39 For exact records of impotency accusations of witches see Witchcraft In Tudor and Stuart England, by Alan Macfarlane, Appendix I. 68 Chapter Four: Ridicule and Parody in The Witches of Lancashire

The more unpossible a thing is, the more we stand in fear thereof; and the less likely to be true, the more we believe it. – Sir Reginald Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft (1564)

A Prologue: Ann Gunter and The Late Lancashire Witches By 1633, the performance date of The Witches of Lancashire, the theatrical representation of the witch had evolved significantly from that of the mysterious and threatening witches of Macbeth (1606). After the success of so many witchcraft plays of the Jacobean era, the theatricality of the witch, and her value as the object of entertainment, had been solidified. Her highly gendered role as the feminine other had marked her culturally as a site of multiple weaknesses and as such open to a variety of supernatural, spectacular occurrences. Another real-life case involving the spectacle of witchcraft was the trial of alleged witchcraft victim Ann Gunter. In the course of his personal involvement with witchcraft trials, James became acquainted with the case of the young woman from Windsor who appeared to have been bewitched or possessed through the witchcraft of one of her female neighbors.40 After reading the numerous local accounts which claimed that the woman had “cast out of her nose and mouth pins in great abundance” (qtd. in Paul 120), James became intrigued by her case and decided to intervene. He assembled the same experts who had defined the argument over Mary Glover’s possession to give their opinions in the matter of Ann Gunter.41 Dr. Jorden again declared that the woman was a victim of hysteria, while his intellectual foil, Samuel Harsnet, insisted that the woman was merely a vengeful fraud. James ordered that Gunter be brought to him while he was on a hunting trip, and so the young lady appeared in front of the king and the rest of his hunting party. The king reported that, whereas not long ago she was a creature in outward show most weak and impotent, yet she did yesterday in

40 The name of the accused witch in the case seems absent from all of the remaining accounts of the victim, Ann Gunter. See Paul’s extensive reprints of journals, pamphlets, and letters to and from King James on the events surrounding the case, (118-120). 41 See Chapter 2 of this work for a more through discussion of the Mary Glover case. 69 our view dance with that…dexterity of the body that we, marveling threreat [sic] to see the great change, spent some time this day in the examination of her concerning the same. (qtd. on 121) James’ presentation of Gunter’s performance accomplishes two goals. First, by familiarizing himself with the theories of established experts before making his own decision as monarch, he strengthened his reputation as an unbiased intellectual in search of truth. He demonstrated to the public that he believed in both the existence of witches and in himself as the supreme authority on them, by positioning himself as the mediator between the available interpretations of the case. Secondly, Gunter’s public audience before the king during his hunting party belied the seriousness of his belief in her claims; the setting of the hunt framed her testimony within the context of entertainment. James presented, for the consideration of his noble hunting companions, the poor Windsor woman whose spectacular performance marks her as the abject other. The scenario for this performance highlighted the spectatorship inherent in witchcraft trials and reaffirmed the witch as the object to be seen. James admitted that the entertainment provided by Gunter was so compelling that the party spent “some time” as the spectators of her examination. By allowing his guests the opportunity to witness Gunter’s spectacular performance, James once again entertained the possibility of the existence of witches and their potential for danger while simultaneously situating himself as a kind of ringmaster capable of controlling their wild natures and compelling the behavior of those under their control. In the end, it was James’ power to compel a confession that was the most fantastic aspect of the story. After her performance before the king, Gunter confided to him that she had been imitating one possessed in order to malign a female neighbor who had recently quarreled with her father. One gentleman in the audience relates, “she (as is characteristic of womankind) inclined to lust, revealed all her tricks….thus was fraud laid bare and detected by the lack of self-control in a woman” (qtd. on 123). Another witness, Dr. Thomas Guidott, confirmed the successful theatricality of the event, remarking that Gunter “acted this part in so exact and wonderfull [sic] a manner, that she deceived all the country where she lived, who thought it to be a truth” (qtd. on 121). Guidott’s

70 account privileges the savvy of the elite audience in recognizing that a witch’s vicitm, like the witch herself, was a “part” to be “acted,” while simultaneously condemning the simple country folk of Windsor who had believed her claim of possession. Though she confesses the truth of her own free will, in the end the glory of detecting the fraud was awarded to the King, solidifying his authority in the case and allowing him to exhibit his compassion towards his subjects. James went on to cast himself as the girl’s protector by taking pity on her and giving her a small portion of money. “She was afterwards married, being, by this subtle artifice, perfectly cured of her mimical witchery” (qtd. on 121). Marriage, it seems, was also the answer to demonic possession: a restorative cure that enclosed weak and impotent women, protecting them from the forces of evil. After learning that his theory had been proven correct by her confession, Harsnet, who had maintained all along that Gunter was a liar, petitioned the king to bring her before the Court of Star Chamber.42 Though the king had special jurisdiction over this court, James refused to allow the council to rule on the case, and when Harnet pressed the matter further he was dismissed from his position. Despite her innocence, there is no record that the accused witch was ever released from prison (124). Another tale of witchcraft and public spectacle much like this one was that of the Late Lancashire Witches in 1633.43 Both cases center on a fraudulent accusation that provided the opportunity to depict both the maleficia of witches, as well as witchcraft accusations, as a form of entertainment. In the Lancashire trial, twelve women were arrested for witchcraft on the testimony of a young boy named Edmund Robinson who claimed that they abused him after he witnessed a feast during their coven’s celebration of a sabbat.44 He further alleged that some of the women were able to turn themselves into greyhounds, cats and other animals. Still more fantastic was his claim that the women had turned him into a horse and ridden about town on him.

42 The Court of Star Chamber was the judicial body that presided over all cases of slander. 43 The word “late” is commonly used to distinguish the events of the 1633Lancaster Witch trial from those of a similar witchcraft trial in Lancashire during 1612. The original quarto of the Heywood and Brome’s play was published under the title The Late Lancashire Witches. Another more critically recognized dramatization of the 1633 trial was Shadwell’s version that bears this same, earlier title. 44 A sabbat is a ritual/celebration performed by a coven “where witches supposedly met for cannibalistic feasts and orgiastic group sex”(Sharpe 18). 71 In trial Edmund Robinson, like Ann Gunter before him, recanted his testimony and the court ruled that the women were the victims of false accusations. Yet in 1637, three years after their exoneration the Lancashire witches were still in prison. Just as the forgotten, nameless witch in Ann Gunter’s case, the innocent Lancashire witches disappear from public record: their identity as individuals is erased from cultural view. Denying just, legal recourse to the woman accused of witchcraft tacitly perpetuated witch-hunts by offering no deterrent to those who engaged in spurious accusations. While these cases cast doubt on those who ascribe to superstitious beliefs, - painting them as naïve, mentally ill or outright liars - it reaffirms the public belief in the automatic guilt of those accused of witchcraft. The resulting paradox forms the cultural situation that informs the action of The Witches of Lancashire. By the 1630’s, witchcraft lore had been so often debunked by new scientific knowledge that the waning social fad, which had begun by stressing the ever-present danger of witches, had resulted in a social atmosphere in which witches, as well as those who adhered the belief of their existence, were mocked for their primitive beliefs. In the course of this play, we see a parade of humans dressed as animals, witches and humans transforming into dogs, cats, and horses, a wedding feast float in from above on ropes and another erupt with a flock of birds, sticks, stones and cowpats, milk pails and brooms move by themselves, and the bloody stump of a witch’s wrist, (with a pinch of singing and dancing thrown in for good measure). These repeated instances of spectacle presented within the context of the play reinforced the new, enlightened belief that witches and their maleficia were improbable notions and most commonly the result of the superstitious imaginations. As products of the imagination they were the perfect material for the theatre. Yet while the image of the witch was embraced as a form of entertainment, she continued to be employed as a scapegoat for the misfortunes of local villages. This chapter examines The Witches of Lancashire as an example of the final phase of the evolution of the English Early Modern image of the witch. Her ridicule re- inscribes the power of the enlightened patriarchy to conquer the supernatural threat posed by witches, while simultaneously maintaining the belief in their existence. The result is that the witch persists in popular culture as a feminine threat to the natural (masculine) order.

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Textual History Though the play was Heywood and Brome’s only collaboration, The Witches of Lancashire has rarely been the topic of literary criticism and there appear to be no records of modern productions of the text. Gabriel Egan includes references to the text in his article “The Early-Seventeenth Century Origin of the Macbeth Superstition,” and directed a staged reading of the play as a companion piece to his production of Macbeth at the Globe Theatre in 2001. Edgar Peel and Pat Southern have written on the historical events of the Lancashire witch trials and give a nod to this dramatization. Heather Hirshfeld has written an article exploring the collaboration between Heywood and Brome. Both she and Egan agree that is likely that Heywood was responsible for the scenes about the witches’ maleficium and village rituals, while the scenes about the social disorder of the Seely household and the witty banter of the three young gentlemen were written by Brome. Most significantly, Diane Purkiss does address this play in her book, The Witch in History. Purkiss uses this play, along with The Witch of Edmonton, in a chapter dedicated to the concepts of truth and testimony in the theatrical representation of the witch trials. Perhaps the play’s lack of modern popularity is due to the fact that there seem to be very few updated publications of the text; the 2002 Egan edited publication is the only version of the text that is not a duplication of the original quarto. Another issue that may account for the play’s present, relatively unknown status is its “unfinished” ending. Because the play was an attempt to capitalize on the public’s thirst for information on a real and on-going trial of a group of accused witches, Heywood and Brome were legally obliged not to speculate on the outcome of the case as it was a matter of state. The early documentary drama ends rather abruptly after an initial round of questioning of the witches. The play is concluded by an epilogue which appeals to the audience, and the authorities, to remember that the authors had not overstepped their bounds by drawing any direct conclusions as to the witch’s innocence or guilt. It instead claims that the play has presented the “facts” of the case and leaves the judgment to the audience and to “Time.” While the authors do stop short at creating a fictionalized ending for the trial, their damning representation of the accused women leaves no doubt as to their guilt.

73 The motivation for the authors to take on this real-life subject may have been more than just an attempt at capitalizing on the well-publicized trial in order to achieve commercial success. The official court records of the witness’ allegations and the interrogations of the accused were not made public until December of 1634, but Heywood and Brome’s script contains a number of passages that contain word-for-word excerpts of their testimonies, and most scholars agree that the authors must have somehow gotten a hold of an advance copy of these accounts which were later published in the form of a pamphlet. Literary critic Herbert Berry insists that members of the Privy Council, which was in charge of the trial, gave these documents to the King’s Men to insure that the resulting play would sway public opinion against the accused witches (Purkiss 244). If we are to believe Berry’s assertion The Lancashire Witches was more than just a frivolous comedy, it was a direct political attempt to unduly implicate the innocent women. Yet whatever their intentions, what remains is a re-affirmation of patriarchal power through the denigration of the witch. Her once feared demonic powers have become little more than a parody of their former selves in their transformation into clever stage tricks. Despite this mocking of her powers, the witch herself must remain as an other against whom the public can define themselves both intellectually and socially. Though the supernatural threat of the witch has been conquered by masculine intellect, the witch herself remains a feminine threat of chaos: a power capable of disrupting the status quo and of transforming every household into a bedlam. Heywood and Brome added the scenes of social disorder of the Seely house in order to demonstrate that, though the majority of the witches’ antics are harmless, witches persisted as a feminine menace to the successful social hierarchy of the patriarchy: a remnant of the unknown powers of old, superstitious knowledge that could not be fully explained by the scientific endeavors of the intellectual elite and thereby threatened the authority of new knowledges. The debate in the play between those who believe in witches and those that do not draws strong class lines through out the landscape of the text. The ultimate suggestion of the play implies that to believe in witches is just as dangerous as denying their existence. Those who successfully navigate this treacherous terrain are able to employ their powers of intellect while remaining ever vigilant against the very real

74 presence of the witch who threated the patriarchal order. That the maleficia represented in the play has such strong economic ramifications further reinforces the class divide. As was typical of real-life witchcraft trials of the day, only those actions of the witches which had negative financial ramifications on their victims were investigated by the local authorities. The Witches of Lancashire portrays the final stage of the progression of the cultural representation of the witch in the Early Modern England; she is as ridiculous as the naïve and superstitious accusations made against her. In this chapter I will discuss the spectacle of the witches’ maleficia and the curious relationship between the real-life Lancashire trial and Heywood and Brome’s theatrical version. I suggest that the line between those who actively believe in witches and those who do not falls along class lines. Finally, I will examine the remaining threat of the witch: her power to disrupt the social hierarchy.

Spectacle: Stretching the Image Heywood and Brome embraced the spectacular elements of Robinson’s fraudulent accusations to appeal to the theatrically savvy audience of the day. The theatre-going public of Early Modern England was comprised of people from every level of the social strata, from royalty to subsistence farmers. Theatre was one of the most popular forms of entertainment in London, and as a result its audience was accustomed to playhouses implementing the latest developments in rigging and scenic technology in order to remain competitive in the eyes of audiences who had so many venues from which to choose. The scenic developments pioneered by Inigo Jones and other designers of court masques had raised the expectations of the theatre-going public who had come to expect more and more elaborate means of staging. Larger theatres even began to employ sailors to operate the elaborate system of ropes used to execute special effects.45 The wild accounts of Edmund Robinson in the real-life Lancaster trial provided an ample fodder of spectacular events from which Heywood and Brome could have

45 For more detailed discussions of the development of scenic technology in Early Modern England see, Lomax, Marion. Stage Images and Traditions: Shakespeare to Ford. New York: Cambridge UP, 1987. Styan, J.L. The English Stage: A History of Drama and Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. And White, Martin. Renaissance Drama in Action: An Introduction to Aspects of Theatre Practice and Performance. New York: Routledge, 1998.

75 chosen in order to lure an audience. One of the most unusual aspects of Robinson’s tale was his claim that he had witnessed the rituals of a coven46 of witches performing a sabbat. English witch lore, unlike its Continental contemporaries, stressed that witches were social misfits who practiced their craft much as they lived their lives: in seclusion. The Lancashire witches were the first in English history to be accused of belonging to a coven. To the English public, who were accustomed to imagining the witch as a solitary practitioner, the idea of a dozen women feasting and dancing around as part of a Satanic rite would have been nothing less than fantastic, perhaps even unbelievable. Interestingly, it seems that Robinson himself had trouble conceiving that these women could have possessed the powers required to have coordinated such a spectacular scene as the one re-enacted in the feast of 4.1. Both the play and Robinson’s account contain a scene in which the food for the witches’ feast is lowered from above as the witches call for it. Yet even in Robinson’s fraudulent account the food does not magically float down from the ether, but rather it is lowered in by some sort of rope system. Robinson testified that he discovered the witches kneeling and pulling on, six several ropes which were fastened or tied to the top if the barn. Presently after which pulling there came in to this informer’s sight flesh smoking, butter in lumps, and milk, as it were flying from the said ropes. All fell into basins which were placed under the said ropes. (qtd. in Egan 166) It would seem that Robinson’s imagination extended only as far as the advancements of theatrical scenic technology. The King’s Men in their production of the play at the Globe Theatre followed this lead in their (re)/production as well. An audience account of the 1634 production by an English gentleman, Nathaniel Tomkyns, notes that the elaborate banquet was revealed by the witches’ “familiars upon pulling a cord” in order to create the effect of “the walking of pails of milk by themselves” (qtd. in Berry 123). By literally showing the strings to the audience, the players induct the audience into the ranks of the intellectually savvy who possess the knowledge required to doubt the power of witches. Through this comparison of the supernatural agency of the witches to stage theatrics, the power of the witch is ridiculed as being little more than spectacle. The

46 My emphasis here. A coven is used to refer to a group of witches. 76 audience is able to prove their own superiority over the witch by rendering her a mere amusement without the ability to pose any real threat. This excerpt from Tomkyns’ account of the play also reveals that the numerous familiars called upon by the witches during their meetings were more than just references to off-stage presences, but rather were staged by men in costumes who operated the theatrical line sets. The familiars first appear on stage when the witches arrive the coven meeting. Like the existence of covens, the practice of witches using their familiars as transportation was not English in nature; witches who were “conveyed by their familiars” were more commonly encountered in Continental and early Scottish lore (Macfarlane 6).47 Yet in the most spectacular scene of “familiar activity” in any of the plays examined in this work, the Lancashire coven rides to their sabbat on the backs of badgers, tigers, porcupines, bears: a veritable parade of eleven companions in all. Heywood and Brome capitalized on Robinson’s account, which provided them with the theatrical opportunity to create a menagerie of humans in animal costumes. Despite the numerous displays of the witches’ antics in the play, their maleficia would have amounted to little more than spectacle in the eyes of the audience of the day. True to its label as a “comedy” the audience is assured that no real or lasting harm results from the actions of the witches. Tompkns remarks that the only “tragical” (qtd. in Berry 123) aspect of the play was the scene in which one of the witches, in her cat form, has her “paw” cut off. Further, those who are temporarily humiliated by their antics seem somehow deserving of a mild reprobation of some sort. The young Boy tormented by the witches at the gentlemen’s hunt was truant and shirking his duties. The three gentlemen, Arthur, Bantam, and Shakestone are made to believe that they are bastards, but they have taken advantage of Generous’ hospitality and treated his dimwitted nephew, Wetstone, poorly. Parnell and Lawrence’s wedding is disrupted, but they are eventually restored to their former selves, as is the Seely family whose household has been turned upside down. Even at the time of its original presentation the play was regarded as little more than a sensational vehicle for singing, dancing, and “fopperies.”

47 See also the discussion of familiars at sabbats in Ewen, Witchcraft and Demonianism (pp. 244-51) 77 Class and Community Nathaniel Tomkyns’ impression of the play confirms the savvy of the audience of the day in both theatrical matters and in witchcraft lore. Aside from his observations about the ropes employed in the feast scene, Tomkyns also notes each of the uses of theatrical spectacle in the play: the moving milk pail, the familiars, the wedding feast of cowpies, bones, and live birds, and the “transformation” of actors into horses and dogs. After this laundry list he concludes, And though there be not in it, to my understanding, any poetical genius, or art, or language, or judgment to state or tenet of witches (which I expected) or application to virtue, but full of ribaldry and of things improbable and impossible. (qtd. in Berry 123) In one sentence Tomkyns confirms both the comic nature of the play and his educated disbelief in the maleficia represented. (He also renders a fairly unflattering opinion of the artistic talents of the authors.) His account reveals that he knew enough of the real-life Lancashire case to expect that the authors might have passed judgment on the witches and was surprised not to have seen one. His reaction to the “improbable and impossible” demonstrations of the witches’ power seems to imply that the play has had the opposite effect of that suggested by Berry; Tomkyns does not believe the accusations and in fact recognizes the text as a kind of parody. Tomkyns also remarks that considering the comic nature of the play he “found a greater appearance of fine folk, gentlemen and gentlewomen” than he had imagined he might encounter (163). It seems that Tomkyns found the topic of the comedy too base for consideration by the upper echelons of society: as if their enlightened intellects might prevent them from being able to fully suspend their disbelief and give in to the obviously “impossible” scenarios presented. The class divide in The Witches of Lancashire is wide and well defined. The first example of this is found in the notion of the hunt. Beginning with the practice of land enclosures by royalty and nobility under the reign of Richard the Lionhearted, hunting had become rife with social inequality. During the Early Modern era in England a series of “qualification laws” were passed which restricted the act of hunting in “royal forests” to those of the “appropriate” social class. Only hunters who owned land that brought in

78 more than forty shillings a year were granted hunting rights. These rules of “Forest Jurisdiction” also forbid commoners from possessing or eating certain types of game regardless of where the animal had been felled (Andrews 45).48 Practices of this sort not only reinforced the widening of social classes, but secured the hegemony of the patriarchy’s domination over nature. The idea of the hunt is not unfamiliar in the field of witchcraft studies. The very term “witch-hunts” places the image of the witch in a dangerous correlation with game animals. As in the case of Ann Gunter, the spectacle of witchcraft in The Witches of Lancashire becomes intertwined with the entertainment of the hunt. This uneasy relationship between witches and hunting provides the context for the opening scene in which Arthur relates to the other gentlemen hunters that he had experienced an event “transcending nature” (1.1.6). While he and his hunting dogs were in pursuit of a hare, the animal suddenly vanished. After arguing at length about the event the gentlemen conclude that the hare must have been a witch in disguise. The supremacy of noble, male hunter is impugned by this inability to successfully capture a wild animal. As Arthur reasons, this is a perversion of the natural roles of dominator and dominated and as such must be the result of magical intervention. As the play progresses, the hunt, as a representation of man’s domination of nature, is once again disrupted by witches. In Act II the gentlemen announce another hunting expedition and the Lancashire coven announces their intention to spoil the party. This time the witches use their close connection with nature to transform themselves into the hunting dogs. Not only do they allow the escape of the quarry, causing the humiliation of the would-be conquering hunters, but their actions also have a secondary, more significant effect: the witches succeed in causing economic chaos when the gentlemen place bets on the dogs. This economic blight alerts the gentry, who might otherwise have ceased to believe in the supernatural, to the power of the witches to disrupt the social order. When the witches prevent the hunters from attaining their intended quarry, they themselves become the hunted.

48 For a detailed description of the specifics which governed “Forest Jurisdiction” from 1066 on, see Richard N.L. Andrews’ Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves which provides a history of environmental policies. 79 Unlike Continental witch trials, in England it was only after property, material goods, livestock or children had been affected that a community would begin serious investigation into witchcraft accusations. When the first Miller at Master Generous’ mill quit his position after weeks of intense torture by the witches in the shape of enormous “cat[s] o’ mountains,” (2.2.198) he is not believed. He is mocked by the other men of the village for being so weak that he cannot fight off a pack of cats and so foolish that he believed that they were an incarnation of a group of witches. Even when an ex-solider takes his place and complains that he too has suffered the same torment, no action is taken. It is only when the maleficium of the witches begin to affect Generous’ financial profits from the mill that the authorities become involved. It is only after the witches force the Boy, who serves as the dog wrangler to the gentlemen hunters, to be confined to his bed due to sickness, that Doughty, a local investigator, is finally called into examine the victim’s claims. Other maleficium presented to Doughty includes butter that will not churn, milk that spoils, and pigs that kill themselves.49 Thus it was the upper class, who had the most to loose economically, that wielded the greatest power to initiate witch- hunts. A further example of the class divide in the play can be seen in the way in which the authors chose to represent the Northern English dialect of Parnell and Lawrence. Though the setting of the play would seem to suggest that all of the characters would have been possessed of the strong, harsh accent, only the servants in the play are presented as having the strong dialect. Heywood and Brome’s representation of the dialect in the original quarto version50 is so difficult to understand that it is no wonder that the play fell out of favor as a modern performance vehicle. The choice of the authors to clean up the harsh Northern dialect of the upper class members of the play would have made the dialects of the servants even more comic and incomprehensible to the more cosmopolitan London audience, which was its original audience. Attributing the accent only to the lower class characters of Parnell and Lawrence marks them as the other. Not

49 Not coincidentally each of these blighted economic commodities were issues that fell firmly on the feminine side of the division of labor; as matters associated with the woman’s sphere of concern they were particularly vulnerable to the powers of the witch. 50 Egan’s 2002 edition of the play, which I employ here, has been “cleaned up” to reflect more modern spellings and to make the dialect of the servants more comprehensible. 80 coincidently, the two are quick to both believe that witches are behind their woes and engage in folk rituals as remedies to them. The Witches of Lancashire presents scenes that portray both the upper and lower classes and differentiates between them, in part, by their willingness to believe in witches. The servants at the wedding party and Robert, Master Generous’ groom, are quick to admit their belief in witches. When events at Parnell and Lawrence’s wedding go awry, the guests are immediately make claims of witchcraft. When Robert’s girlfriend Moll, a member of the coven, suggests that the two of them fly to London on a horse in order to get a cask of his favorite wine, he spends little more than a moment in disbelief before climbing on board. Meanwhile, the upper class is much more wary of accepting the existence of witches. Sir Arthur and his gentlemen hunting companions argue at length about the unnatural events of the hunt. Doughty requires repeated proof of their economically disruptive powers before he will begin the investigation of the witches. Master Generous, much admired by all in the play for his hospitality and jovial attitude, denies the existence of witches repeatedly throughout the play. Even after his wife admits that she has practiced witchcraft, he refuses to take see witches as a threat to him. Ultimately, the implication made by the authors is that persons of a lower class do not have a grasp of the new, official knowledges required to be correctly skeptical of the existence of witches.

Inversion: Disrupting the Social Order The most disruptive power of Heywood and Brome’s coven is their ability to turn the Seely household upside down. Bewitched by the coven, the hierarchical structure of the household is reversed: servants control the masters, and children rule over their parents. The scenes of social inversion at the Seely house, which comprise the core of the comic material in the play, were additions made by the authors and did not originate from Robinson’s original accusation. Though Heywood and Brome’s text purported to be a kind of documentary drama, they devote a large portion of the play to the fictional Seelys, who appear in as many scenes as the witches themselves. The significance of their unnatural predicament can also be seen in the reactions of other characters. Despite the fact that other victims of the witches, such as the Miller and the Boy, endure more

81 severe torments, the townsfolk are fascinated with the strange events at the Seely house. Upon witnessing the son, Gregory’s, domination of his father Doughty chides, DOUGHTY: You forget yourself, And in this foul unnatural strife wherein You trample on your father, you are fall’n Below humanity. You’re so beneath The title of a son and you cannot claim To be a man….(1.2.36-41) Here we see that the disastrous results of the inversion represent more of a threat than all of the other minor maleficia of the witches combined. In Early Modern England, the failure of a man to dominate those of lower social order was a direct reflection on his masculine abilities. For as Kramer and Springer ask in The Hammer of Witches, Can he be called a free man whose wife governs him, imposes laws on him, orders him, and forbids him to do as he wishes, so that he cannot and dare not deny her anything she asks? I should call him only a slave, the vilest of slaves, even if he comes of the noblest family. (qtd. in Kors 124) The power of the witches to disrupt the patriarchal hierarchy of the Seely household renders their victims less than human and unfit for the title of “man.” The matter of what should be done about the misfortune of the Seely household is hotly disputed by those of the town, and finally they defer the matter to Doughty, the local investigator. He arranges for the state to seize their land and assets on the grounds of mental deficiency (4.3.30-33). Their failure to conform to the patriarchal order results in loss of income, status and, in the eyes of their community, their humanity. The authors also imply that the cause of the inversion of the Seely household can be traced to economic inequality. In his castigation of his father, Gregory accuses Seely of squandering money in gambling and suspects that the old man intends to give his inheritance to a cousin. The daughter, Winny, chastises her mother, Joan, for failing to provide her with appropriate and fashionable clothing. She rants, WINNY: Is this a fit habit for a handsome young

82 gentlewoman’s mother, as I hope to be a lady? You look like one o’ the Scottish weird sisters. (1.2.161-163) Through this telling citation of Macbeth the authors reveal that in the twenty-seven years since Shakespeare’s weird sisters were constructed, the once feared representation of the witch has degenerated into little more than a punch line at the end of a child’s temper tantrum. Family is not the only institution disrupted by the witches, marriage too is distorted. According to lore, witches hated the institution of marriage because of their own excessively lustful natures, and in The Witches of Lancashire the coven does their best to thwart the wedding between Lawrence and Parnell. Their attempts to disrupt the rituals employed in the marriage ceremony are presented as means by which the witches can hinder the male dominance inherent in the patriarchal institution of marriage. When the guests arrive at the wedding they discover that the lavish wedding feast has been replaced with an assortment of stones, horns, and live birds by the witches. The witches also ruin a blessing in which a cake crumbled over the heads of the newlyweds. This is a pagan ritual intended to insure the fertility of the new couple by baptizing them in the fruits of the earth. By stealing the cake for the ritual the witches symbolically rob the couple of the gift of procreation, the true intent of marriage. In an ironic editorial on the domineering nature of marriage, the coven bewitch the fiddlers at the wedding to play “The Sack of Troy,” a song of conquering, in place of the expected song of joy which should accompany the arrival of a new couple. When the newlyweds leave to consummate the wedding, they discover that they Parnell, who was reputed to be quite talented by other women around town, is unable to perform his husbandly duties. Causing impotence was a common example of the maleficia of English witches as it reinforced the masculine (castration) anxiety that feminine agency would result in the destruction of male sexuality. Upon seeing the chaotic state of affairs, Doughty immediately declares that those involved must be bewitched. Yet still the antics of the witches at the wedding are not proof enough for the authorities to begin an official investigation. In this moment of slippage in the rule of new, official knowledge the villagers must rely on a folk remedy based in superstitious,

83 old knowledge intended to quell disputes between a husband and wife: the skimminton.51 After a violent attack of the effigies used in the rite, in which the violent domination of man over nature is re-affirmed and masculine agency is restored, the couple is able to consummate their marriage. Perhaps the most vivid example of the threat to the male domination of marriage can be seen in the actions of Mistress Generous, the leader of the coven in The Witches of Lancashire. Her husband, Master Generous, becomes suspicious of her fidelity when his groom, Robert, reveals that she has taken his gray gelding52 out riding on a number of occasions without informing him of her destination. Master Generous is forced to assert his patriarchal authority over his wife by forbidding her to take out the horses. When Mistress Generous next comes to take the gelding, Robert denies her based on the strict instructions of Master Generous. Deprived of her choice of transportation to the sabbat, she uses a magic bridle and a spell to turn Robert into a horse. Here Mistress Generous is transgressive on a number of different levels. She is disobedient to her husband, and she disrupts the natural order by forcing servitude a man to assume the servile role in their relationship. This idea of transgression takes on a sexual level through the authors’ repeated use of words like “use” and “ride” to characterize her abuse of Robert. At the sabbat, when Mistress Generous regales the others in the coven with this account, Moll, Robert’s girlfriend, jokes: MOLL: I know how you rid, Lady Nan. MISTRESS: Ha, ha, ha! Upon the knave my man. It is clear here that the implication is that both women have “ridden” Robert. Further, the lusty actions of the women reiterate the popular notion of the lascivious nature of witches. Robert is finally able to restore order to the situation by using the bewitched bridle on Mistress Generous, once again reinforcing the servile nature of both woman and

51 The skimmington is a procession through town in which effigies of the man and woman are manipulated to re-enact the grievance of the couple in the hopes that the trouble would be resolved by the doubles. See Egan p. 144. It is possible that this tradition finds its roots in a rite performed on the pagan holiday of Beltane. During this fertility celebration effigies, fashioned from stalks of grain, were paraded through the harvest fields in reverence for the sacred, life-giving union of man and woman. The seed that fell from these effigies onto the fields became part of the next year’s crop. 52 The fact that the horse is a gelding cannot have been a coincidence given the situation at hand. It’s lack of true masculinity justifies its “misuse” by Mistress Generous and also serves to lessen the connection between the horse and the men who later serve as her rides. 84 animal. Robert continues to conflate the two when Master Generous discovers a new “horse” in his stable. When questioned as to where this new mare had come from Robert replies, “I can assure you ‘tis your own beast” (4.2.67). Here the spousal relationship is likened to that of owning livestock. The last scene of The Witches of Lancashire provides one final perversion of the concept of marriage. Meg’s confession to the authorities that she has slept with her familiar reminds the audience that, according to witchcraft lore, the demonic union between the devil and the witch was sealed by the pair’s “sweet coupling” (5.5.221). By ending the play with this citation of the witches’ Satanic marriage, the masculinist anxieties of the audience are reassured by the knowledge that the perceived feminine power of the witch actually falls within the masculine domain of the devil: femininity is once again dominated by masculinity.

Conclusion Like the real-life case of Ann Gunter, The Witches of Lancashire examines the notion of witchcraft at a curious intersection between real-life and fiction. Gunter’s case, as well as the real-life and fictional accounts of the Lancashire witches, provide telling examples of the cultural perceptions of witchcraft in relations to gender and class. By the time of the Lancashire witch trials of 1634, the cultural representation of the witch had transformed from an unknown danger to a ridiculed scapegoat. Her once fearsome powers had become fodder for theatrical spectacle. Yet both rich and poor alike seemed socially obligated to continue to mark the witch as a threat to the natural hierarchical order. Though the dawning of the Enlightenment had somewhat diminished her powers, the witch maintained her position as a socially transgressive figure marked by her disruptive feminine nature. Regardless of the motivations that influenced its authors, The Witches of Lancashire succeeded in bolstering the patriarchal hegemony through its ridicule of the once powerful witch archetype.

85 Chapter Five – Conclusion Conjuring the true nature of the witch is a difficult thing since she is continually transformed by the society that creates her. And though her role in society changes in order to accommodate the needs of those who choose to represent her again and again, one fact remains the same: she occupies the dark side of the binary. She is nature: the wind of the storm, the tempest of the sea, the howl of the beast. She is the night, the moon, the shadow. She is the hunted, the other, the object. Our sin, our transgressive self. She is emotion and stillness. She is sex and death. Murderer and Mother. Mystery and Madness. She is the hag who lived in the woods, who locked us in a tower, who poisoned the apple, who keeps us from our Prince. She is the Devil’s plaything. Representations of her reflect our coping skills in the face of chaos and disorder. She is a vision of our own historical anxieties: one from which we struggle to free ourselves. And though she dwells in the shadows, there is about her what Foucault calls “a principle of compulsory visibility,” (187) through which her dark power is devalued. Her highly visible status leaves her open to constant, disciplinary re-formation. As the object of constant surveillance and documentation, the witch is reconstructed so frequently that all traces of her individuality are erased as a singular she is transfigured into one of them. In this active construction of an alternate identity, the image of the witch is at the mercy of the multiple oppressions of gender, class and faith. In Early Modern England her burden was even heavier; she was constructed as the enemy of an empire, the negative against which a nation was defined. The plays of the witch-vogue of the early Seventeenth century represent a curious intersection of history, politics, cultural fad and theatricality. The volatile socio- economic condition of Early Modern England required a common enemy against whom English, Scottish, Catholic, Protestant, rich and poor could all unite. James’ own interest in the occult provided the perfect object upon which to heap their fear, revulsion, and ridicule: the witch. By engaging in scholarly discourse on the occult, enacting new legislation concerning the approved means of witchcraft accusation and conviction, and through his personal involvement in witchcraft trials of the day, James establishes himself as the supreme authority on one of the greatest threats to the empire. His direct

86 involvement served to depict him as a concerned father-figure with a genuine interest in the welfare of his people. Not long after the role of the witch had become the ultimate symbol of the unknown, the climate shifted again. James’ attempts to elevate public opinion of his own rule above that of his predecessor Elizabeth relied on the creation of a new, masculine national identity capable of colonization and characterized by a new regime of scientific and rational intellect. In this new regime of rationality the all-powerful image of the witch is transformed, made more familiar. She takes on the mask of the old, the poor, and the deformed and represents, in many ways, the potential of all women. Though she is still feared and recognized as a very real threat, she is strangely pitiable to an audience who most likely lived in close proximity to a woman in much the same circumstances. Recognizable to even the simplest of souls, the identification and enclosure of the witch becomes the responsibility of every citizen. New knowledge of state-sanctioned means of accusation and conviction was circulated by theatre, ballads, and the publication of pamphlets. And, because the theatre in Early Modern England was so well attended by such a wide range of society, it was able to function as an ideal medium for the creation and dissemination of not only cultural representations, like the witch, but culture itself. The fact that witchcraft plays often capitalized on real-life events further blurs the line between fact and fiction, life and art. The popular conception of the accuracy of these theatrical representations ran the gamut between those who believed whole heartedly in their truth and others who could not reconcile them with their own intellectual knowledge. The notion of the spectacle inherent in both the real-life trials and in their theatrical counterparts further complicated their acceptance as truth. Yet at the same time this spectacle fed the thirst of audiences who were all too eager to consume these fantastic escapes from the mundane world. The fictional status of the theatrical spectacle impugns the threatening powers of the witch, and she is once again reduced, this time to an object of parody. Despite her new, less powerful manifestation, her presence is still compelled to signify a feminine threat to the patriarchy, the other against whom society must rally. By examining the image of the witch, not as a fixed representation, but as a mobile representation of a site of transgression we can gain insight into the social, political and economic climates that formed them. This allows for

87 a more thorough critique of theatre as a medium of knowledge production, not merely a static reflection of life as it may (or may not) have been. Despite the flux in the specific nature of the witch in the Early Modern Era, there remain many similarities between the three plays discussed in this work. Each of them reveals a deep anxiety over her relationship with nature, as is evidenced by the close relationship between the transgressive witch and her demonic paramour, the familiar. The actions of the witches in each play cause acute disruptions of the social order. In Macbeth, they interfere with the very fate of the nation. In The Witch of Edmonton, Mother Sawyer meddles in affairs of the heart, inflicts madness, and is able to deceive a court of law. In The Witches of Lancashire, they are able to reverse the social hierarchy of an entire household. The spectacle of social inversion in the events at the Seely house recalls that of the festivals of Fool’s Day, the holiday in which the levels of social hierarchy were reversed as the ridiculed became king for a day. The morris dance, planned by the dimwitted Cuddy in The Witch of Edmonton, was also a ritual associated with Fool’s Day and is an example of the spectacular and comic elements inherent in inversion. Each play reveals the gendered anxiety of the patriarchal hegemony. Macbeth’s mysterious weird sisters embody a kind of gender ambiguity with their strange appearance and uncertain nature of their powers. Lady Macbeth becomes an equal, if not an instigator, in her marriage after she is unsexed. And time and time again, Macbeth himself is impugned for his inability to father children and behave like a man. The Witch of Edmonton reveals the gender inequality present in witchcraft accusations, noting that the power of the dominant (i.e. masculine) allows them to escape public scrutiny. The Witches of Lancashire is filled with husbands and lovers unable to control their women, an impotent bridegroom, women who take on demonic lovers, and a man literally being ridden as a horse. Symbolically, images of hacked off heads and limbs in Macbeth and The Witches of Lancashire conjure unmistakable connections to castration anxiety. Invoking the witch on the Early English stage blurred the lines between fact and fiction, because, despite the continued decline of witchcraft accusations, there still existed real women who readily confessed to being witches. Macbeth, capitalizes on King James’ well-known fascination with the occult and incorporated references to

88 contemporary events to legitimize its view of the witch as a mysterious and pervasive threat to society. The Witch of Edmonton, imbued with an air of authority through its connection to a real-life witchcraft trial, acted as a kind of early docudrama. The theatrical depiction of the real-life trial is so close to the published transcripts of Elizabeth Sawyer’s case that it is hard to remember that more than half of the scenes in the play have no factual basis whatsoever. The Witches of Lancashire also exploits its real-life basis for entertainment purposes. This treading of the line between fact and reality was further complicated by the fact that the accusations made in the real-life trail were fraudulent. What results is a theatrical representation of a real trial based on a fictional account. The difference between the genres represented by each of the plays allows the issue of witchcraft to be explored within a variety of frameworks. Macbeth represents the genre of high tragedy, appealing primarily to the upper classes, though the additions of song and dance to the original text did attempt to gain greater popular success. Shakespeare demonstrates that the actions of witches can affect every situation - from the highest levels of society (the king and nation), to the institution of marriage, to the very workings of nature itself. In The Witch of Edmonton, authors Dekker, Rowley and Ford represent the witch from the two different points of view available to them in the genre of the tragicomedy. The label of domestic tragedy allows the witch to be depicted as a familiar, pitiable crone involved in an intimate satanic relationship. In the play’s comic plotline the play focuses acknowledges the witch to be an image exploited for the purpose of popular entertainment. Heywood and Brome capitalizes on the spectacular elements of witchcraft maleficia to create the uproarious comedy in The Witches of Lancashire. They stretch both the popular image of the witch and the historical basis for the play, (as well as adding the scenes of social inversion), in order to capitalize on the public’s thirst for the “all-singing, all-dancing witch vogue53” that ridiculed the once powerful image of the witch. By depicting the witch in every available genre, her image was able to be viewed by a wider range of audience members, allowing her representation to permeate the cultural imagination of all classes and tastes.

53 Diane Purkiss’ term. from The Witch in History. 89 There is, in my mind, a curious correlation between the witch and the theatre: in the context of the Renaissance both were created as outside the bounds of accepted society. Both were highly visual representations of the amoral, the impolite and the titillating. Both worked in concert to simultaneously define and distort the limits of society and reality, and both persist as such. The theatrical representation of the witch continues to evolve - How different are the witches presented in The Crucible, Vinegar Tom, and Wicked? How are these new images of the witch constructed and perceived? What do they tell us about their own cultural and political climates? The question posed to us by the image of the witch is the same question posed by Cixous’ Newly Born Woman, Who Invisible, foreign, secret, hidden, mysterious, black, forbidden Am I… Is this me, this no-body that is dressed up, wrapped in veils, carefully kept distant, pushed to the side of History and change, nullified, kept out of the way, on the edge of the stage…? For you? (69).

90 Appendix A Synopsis of Macbeth Act I of Macbeth begins with the Three Witches who meet and greet each other amidst a raging storm, disappearing as quickly as they arrived. In the second scene, we are introduced to some of the key players in the drama. A bloody and wounded captain appears before King Duncan, Prince Malcolm and other nobles to report on the events of a recent battle against the treasonous Macdonwald, the Thane of Cawdor. He retells the events of the battle stressing the valorous conduct of Banquo and the fierce bravery of Macbeth, who succeeded in killing the traitor. Duncan is so impressed by the account that he announces that the title Thane of Cawdor will be awarded to Macbeth, when next he sees him, as a reward for his honorable defense of the king and crown. In scene three, the witches reappear and relate the details of their most recent acts of mischief. As they begin to chant a spell they are encountered by Banquo and Macbeth who are returning from their recent battle. The Witches hail Macbeth as the Thane of Cawdor, which Macbeth has yet to be informed of, and further prophesy that he will be King of Scotland. They also reveal that Banquo’s children will be kings of Scotland. The witches disappear into the air leaving Macbeth and Banquo unsure of who or what they have just encountered. The two men journey on to meet up with Duncan, Malcolm and the other nobles. There Duncan makes two announcements: Malcolm is named as the official heir to the throne and Macbeth is tapped as the Thane of Cawdor. Later, at his castle, Macbeth reveals the events of the day to his wife, and they marvel at the accuracy of the witches’ predictions. The couple is aware that this new appointment makes Macbeth next in line to the throne after the Prince. They plot to capitalize on this new position andto acquire the crown for Macbeth. A messenger announces that the king and his party have arrived for a visit and Macbeth goes to greet him. When she is alone, Lady Macbeth fears that her husband may not have the ambition and strength of will to carry out their plans to murder the king and calls upon the spirits to “unsex” her and make her strong enough to help her carry out their plans. After the evening’s entertainments the royal party retires to bed and the Macbeths set upon their deadly, treasonous plot. Act II opens as Macbeth, on his way to kill the King, encounters Banquo who is eager to discuss the accuracy of the witches’ earlier predictions. As Banquo exits with 91 his young son Fleance, Macbeth is left to realize that Banquo knows too much, and that his child represents a threat to Macbeth’s future dynasty. In order to insure his own success he resolves that the two must be eliminated. Macbeth then exits to carry out his crime of regicide. After the deed is done, Macbeth returns to report to his wife on the proceedings of their plan. But in his haste he leaves the scene of the crime carrying the murder weapon and covered in blood. Lady Macbeth chides him for his thoughtlessness and sends to clean up and then to plant the bloody murder weapon on the two royal chamber guards; Macbeth dutifully obeys. The scene changes to the front gate of the castle where Macduff, a loyal thane has arrived at the gates early the next morning. Duncan had commanded that Macduff report immediately to him upon arriving at Macbeth’s and so he asks his host if the king is awake yet. Macbeth invites him in and allows him to discover the murdered king. Upon the horrifying discovery the entire castle is awakened. Macbeth, feigning ignorance and outrage, kills the guards before they can be questioned under the pretence that they were obviously the murderers. Fearing for their own lives Malcolm and his younger brother Donalbain flee to England. At the beginning of Act III, in the absence of the princes, Macbeth is crowned king. Banquo begins to become suspicious of the uncanny accuracy of the witches’ predictions and Macbeth hires a group of murderers to kill Banquo and his son Fleance. While Macbeth and his wife congratulate themselves on their successful plots, the murderers ambush Banquo and Fleance in the nearby woods. They murder Banquo, but Fleance escapes. Meanwhile, at a feast for the other thanes, Macbeth is tormented by visions of Banquo’s ghost, and his anxiety almost results in his full confession in front of the entire banquet. Lady Macbeth’s fainting draws attention away from her husband and so their plot remains a secret. Meanwhile the three witches meet up with their mistress, Hecate, and rejoice in song and dance. Back at the castle, Lennox and a few other thanes become suspicious of Macbeth’s quick rise to the throne. Anxious to know his fate, Macbeth begins Act IV by seeking out the witches who conjure a series of apparitions to provide further prophecies for the king. Though they maintain that Banquo’s heirs will still be kings they foretell that no man born of woman can harm Macbeth and that he will not be overthrown until nearby Birnam Woods comes to the castle at Dunsinane. Bolstered by a new since of invincibility Macbeth returns

92 home. Convinced that Macbeth was somehow responsible for the death of Duncan, Macduff, encouraged by a group of loyal thanes, goes to England to bring back Malcolm, the rightful heir to the throne. Meanwhile Macbeth’s bloody plots continue; he sends the murderers to Macduff’s castle where they kill his wife and children. Malcolm meets with Macduff in England and, after a lengthy debate in which the two try discover the true loyalties of the other, Malcolm agrees to return to Scotland. Act V opens with an anxious discussion between Lady Macbeth’s servants and her doctor who speculate on the Queen’s recent strange behavior. They spy on her as she sleepwalks through the halls of the castle trying to wash unseen blood off of her hands. As the remaining thanes debate which side they will take in the upcoming battle for the throne, Macbeth returns home and haughtily reassures the doctors and servants that both he and his lady will be just fine. The remainder of the play chronicles the battle for the throne. Macduff and the Prince’s army camouflage themselves with branches of the trees from Birnam wood and attack Macbeth at Dunsinane castle. Macbeth fights on until the very end and is finally beheaded by Maduff who, we are informed, was the product of a caesarian section. Malcolm is crowned king and Macbeth’s head is posted on a stake outside of the castle as a warning against future acts of treason.

93 Appendix B Synopsis of The Witch of Edmonton

The play begins with a brief prologue that hints at the fact that the action of the play comes from an actual witchcraft trial and that the play combines both elements of “mirth and matter” (line 12) in its retelling. Act I opens with Frank Thorney and his pregnant lover Winnifride, a servant of Frank’s friend Sir Arthur, discussing what is to be done about her unfortunate situation. They both reveal their deep love for one another and their determination to remain together, despite the fact that Frank’s father, Old Thorney, has threatened to disown him if he continues his socially and financially inappropriate relationship with Winnifride. The two plan to marry in secret in order to allow Old Thorney to continue his matchmaking attempts between his son and Susan Carter, the daughter of his wealthy neighbor, Old Carter. Sir Arthur arrives and offers to pay Frank to marry Winnifride, and save her reputation. Frank agrees but demands that Sir Arthur write a letter to his father, Old Thorney, denying that the marriage had taken place. Sir Arthur agrees and assures Winnifride that her good reputation will be restored. In a private conversation Sir Arthur reveals that he and Winnifride have been lovers in the past and that, despite her impending marriage to Frank, he would like their affair to continue. Winnifride is horrified by this suggestion and vows to remain faithful to her loving husband, even if he does not plan to be faithful to her. Meanwhile in Edmonton, Old Carter and Old Thorney plan the up coming marriage of their children. Susan Carter and her sister, Katherine, avoid the advances of two would-be suitors, Warbeck and Somerton. Frank arrives to assure his father that he will be marrying the wealthy Susan Carter and promptly sets off to see his intended and met the in-laws. Act II opens with Mother Sawyer gathering sticks and bemoaning her reputation as the village witch of Edmonton, (which she insists she is not), and her mistreatment by the local noble, Old Banks. Old Banks enters, and as she has just complained, begins to chastise and beat her. When he leaves, she vows to discover how to truly become witch so that she might avenge her cruel treatment. Next, we are introduced to Old Banks’ dim-witted nephew, Cuddy Banks, who, along with several other performers from the village, is in the throws of a planning session for a morris dance. When they encounter 94 Mother Sawyer, whom they mock and torment, they get the notion to try and enlist a “real” witch to play the role of the witch in their merry entertainment. Saywer curses them and cries to the heavens to help her become a powerful witch, capable of destroying her enemies. Suddenly, she is confronted by a large, black, talking Dog who claims that he is the Devil. He promises that he can help her revenge herself upon her enemies if only she will commit herself to him, body and soul. She agrees, and to seal the pack he sucks her blood from her “witch’s teat.” Yet, when Sawyer calls on him to kill her enemy, Old Banks, the Dog replies that he has no power to inflict lasting harm on the innocent and that she will have to content herself with causing lesser forms of mischief. She tries out her new powers when she encounters Cuddy for the second time. He offers to pay her for a love potion with which she hopes to seduce Kate Carter, who he has secretly admired. She chants some mangled Latin charm and tells him to wait at the edge of a nearby field on a certain night for his love to arrive. Cuddy is thrilled by this interaction and speeds off. Meanwhile, Warbeck and Somerton plot how they may derail Susan Carter’s upcoming wedding. Frank and Susan meet alone for the first time and he tries to gauge her reaction to his intended bigamy by telling her that he once had a fortune teller prophesy that he would have two wives. She is unwilling to view his story as more than a mere amusement. He then tells her that his “work” will require him to travel and that he will only be able to spend half of his time with her in Edmonton. Susan happily agrees and vows that she will be faithful to him. He departs to meet with Winnifride. Act III returns to Cuddy and his planning session for the morris dance. After ironing out a few more details, the performers depart and Cuddy begins to make his way to his rendezvous with Katherine at the edge of the field near a pond. There he encounters the Dog; Cuddy does not recognize the Dog as the devil and treats him as if he were a stray. The Dog conjures a spirit which Cuddy believes to be Katherine. Cuddy is lured by the spirit into the pond, where he nearly drowns. Meanwhile, Frank has returned to Edmonton for his wedding and bringing with him Winnifride, disguised as a boy. Winnifride is so desperate to be near Frank that she has agreed to act as his squire in order to spend more time with him, and to get a glimpse at her competition. After the wedding, Susan meets them both and expresses her pleasure at the thought that her husband will have a companion on his travels. She makes Winnifride promise that he/she

95 will care for her husband just as a wife would; she even gives him/her a ring to seal the union. Racked with guilt, Frank agrees to take a short walk with Susan before he leaves town. As they walk, the Dog appears, (unseen to any but the audience), and enacts his plan. He rubs against Frank who then abruptly turns on Susan, calling her a whore who has seduced him into the sin of bigamy. He draws his knife and stabs her. As she dies, she claims that she deserves this fate for causing him to be unfaithful. As she continues to claim she is not worthy to live he stabs her again and she dies. Realizing what he has done, Frank concocts a plan to prove his innocence. He stabs himself and then the Dog ties him to a tree where he is found moments later by Old Thorney and Old Carter. Frank tells the fathers that he and Susan were attacked by two murderers. He describes these criminals and the fathers immediately recognize them as Warbeck and Somerton, the suitors of the Carter daughters. The act ends as Warbeck, Somerton, and Sir Arthur join Cuddy and the others for the beginning of the morris dance. Act IV begins with Old Banks and several of his neighbors listing their recent misfortunes and claiming that Mother Sawyer was the witch behind them all. They undertake a folk ritual to prove her guilt; they burn a handful of thatch from her roof and wait for her to come running as the folklore holds. When she does appear, she is seized by the villagers and brought before the local Justice. He informs the villagers that they have no legally recognizable proof that Sawyer is a witch. Old Banks begins to beat Sawyer out of frustration, and the Justice orders him to stop, reminding the mob that they need more concrete proof before bringing Sawyer before the court again. Mother Sawyer leaves, elated that she has been exonerated, and immediately calls for the Dog. He appears, and the two embrace and kiss while catching up on each other’s misdeeds. While they speak, a neighbor, Anne Ratcliffe, enters raving mad and accusing Sawyer of causing her insanity. Sawyer commands the Dog to touch her, which he does, and the young woman dies. The mob reappears and, seeing the scene, takes Sawyer into custody again. Meanwhile Katherine and Frank mourn the death of Susan as the Dog appears among them, unseen. When Katherine leaves the room for a moment, the Dog conjures an image of Susan and Winnifride. Frank, terrified, confesses his crime to the image of Winnifride. Katherine overhears him and runs to inform her father of the true identity of her sister’s murderer. Old Banks and a few local officers take Frank into custody while

96 he continues to confess his guilt to the image of Winnifride, who remains unseen to the others on stage. Act V begins with Mother Sawyer alone again and bemoaning her fate. The Dog appears to her again, and this time he is a white dog. She begs him for help and he replies that she has brought all of this on herself by cursing and inviting him into her activities. The Dog then appears to Cuddy and reveals his true identity and warns that if Cuddy isn’t mindful of his ways he too could become the plaything of the devil. The Carter and Thorney households arrive at the court, along with Winnifride and Sir Arthur, to hear Frank’s official confession. The justice sentences Frank to death, officially pardons Warbeck and Somerton, and imposes a steep fine on Sir Arthur for his deceiving letter to Old Thorney. The mob then brings in Mother Sawyer and then after a long series of testimonies and interrogations Mother Sawyer confesses that she is indeed a witch. The mob then accuses her of bewitching Frank into murdering Susan. Though she has never met the two, she states that she might as well admit to that crime too, since public opinion is so against her. The Justice sentences both Frank and Sawyer to death. Somerton asks for Katherine’s hand in marriage, and both she and her father accept. Lastly, Old Carter takes in the pregnant Winnifride and says that he will give her to Katherine as a servant when she is married. All rejoice in the demise of the witch of Edmonton. In a short Epilogue by Winnifride, she admits that, though she is a widow, she hopes that people will speak kindly of her, implying that her new position leaves her open to being called a witch.

97 Appendix C Synopsis of The Witches of Lancashire

Act I begins with three young gentlemen, Arthur, Bantam and Shakestone, debating the strange events of their recent hunting trip, during which the hare which they were chasing mysteriously vanished into thin air. They argue whether it may have possible that a witch was behind the supernatural disappearance. They encounter Whetstone, a fool and the nephew of a local gentry man, Master Generous, who is well reputed for his hospitality. As Generous has agreed to help Arthur out of a financial difficulty, and because his wife Mistress Generous has the best table in the countryside, the men decide to invite themselves to the Generous’ house for dinner. Arthur reveals that he would ordinarily have asked his own uncle Seely for financial assistance, but that presently the Seely household is in turmoil. The children, Gregory and Winny, have lost all respect for their parents and order them about in a most disgraceful fashion. Yet even the children are polite in comparison to the actions of the servants, Parnell and Lawrence, who abuse the whole family, constantly insulting and bullying the family. Lawrence and Parnell take advantage of their new position by planning an elaborate celebration for their upcoming wedding, at the expense of their masters. Act II begins with the meeting of four of the witches of the Lancashire coven who reveal that they are behind the bewitching of the Seely household. They call for their familiars who appear; the group sings, dances, and sucks from the witches’ teats. The group then plots to interfere with the upcoming gentlemen’s hunt, by impersonating the greyhounds and leading the horses and hunters on a dangerous and wild goose chase. The next morning we return to Generous’ house where, after another filling meal, Generous says good-bye to his guests and goes to look for his wife. He is informed by his groom, Robert, that Mistress Generous has left the house on his favorite horse. Furious, Generous instructs Robert to refuse to let her take out the horse in the future, and then he sends Robert on an errand to bring back wine from the town. Generous then receives a visit from a begging, former solider. Generous refuses him money but hires the solider to replace the former supervisor at his mill who has just quit, alleging that he had been tortured by nightly attacks of fierce cats, which he claims have been bewitched. 98 The scene returns to the hunt where the Boy, who is in charge of the hunting dogs, is loafing about, delinquent in his duties. While the gentlemen wait on him to arrive they place bets on the hunt and taunt the dimwitted Whetstone, calling him a bastard. When the Boy finally decides to make his way to the hunt, he begins whipping one of the dogs who transforms into Gillian Dickinson, one of the witches, and her demon imp. They take the Boy prisoner and bring him with them to their witches’ feast. The scene then switches back to the stables at Master Generous’ house where Robert prepares to go on his errand for wine. His girlfriend, a maid named Moll who is also a member of the coven, admits to him that she is a witch, convincing him of her powers by making a broom and pail move on their own. She offers to fly him to London instead where Robert could buy wine from his favorite merchant; he agrees and the two are off. Act III returns to the Seely household which is in preparation for the elaborate wedding feast of Parnell and Lawrence. Suddenly, the feast is disrupted as the imps spirit away the real feast and replace it with sticks, stones, bones, cowpats, vermin and birds. The musicians are unable to play and marriage folk rituals are disrupted. Meanwhile, the Seelys are returned to “right” minds. After a long debate by the guests on the cause of the strange events, Doughty, the local investigator is forced to conclude that witches must be the cause of the chaos. Back at Generous’ house Robert has returned with the wine from London, and his master is puzzled by how he has traveled over 300 miles so quickly. As Robert begins to worry that he will be punished for his association with witchcraft, Mistress Generous arrives and demands to take out the horse. When Robert denies her, as his master has instructed, Mistress Generous reveals that she is the leader of the witches’ coven. She places him in a magic bridle which transforms him into a horse and she rides off on him to meet the rest of the coven. At the beginning of Act IV, the witches arrive on the backs of their various familiars and they begin to dine on the stolen wedding feast, which is lowered in by a series of ropes. In the midst of their revelries, the captured Boy manages to free himself and the coven is forced to break up in order to hunt for him. When Mistress Generous arrives home she is forced to admit the truth to her suspicious husband, who has previously denied the existence of witches. She repents her crimes and promises to mend

99 her ways. Back at the Seely house, Lawrence is unable to consummate the marriage. His impotency sends his new wife, Parnell, into a frenzy and she begins to beat him repeatedly. The villagers perform another folk ritual to “cure” the couple. Mistress Generous helps her complaining nephew, Whetstone, to avenge himself on the gentlemen who have maligned his paternity by sending them visions proving that they are all bastards. In Act V, the solider-turned-miller arrives and complains that he too has been tortured mercilessly by the cat-like spirits, but brags that he has managed to cut off a paw from one of them. Mistress Generous claims to be sick and retires to her bed. After a series of questions from her suspicious husband, it is discovered that her hand has been cut off, revealing that she was, in fact, the wild cat in question. Furious, Master Generous turns her over to Doughty, who rounds up the rest of the coven for an interrogation. The witches each either confess their wrongs or, at the least, refuse to deny them. The play ends with an epilogue assuring the audience that the authors will not attempt to pass judgment on an on-going trial and will leave the verdict to “Time” and the courts.

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