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.