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Scepticism and Belief in English Witchcraft Drama, 1538–1681

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Scepticism and Belief in English Witchcraft Drama, 1538–1681 SCEPTICISM AND BELIEF IN ENGLISH WITCHCRAFT DRAMA, 1538–1681 Scepticism and belief in English witchcraft drama, 1538–1681 ERIC PUDNEY Lund University Press Copyright © Eric Pudney 2019 The right of Eric Pudney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Lund University Press The Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology P.O. Box 117 SE-221 00 LUND Sweden http://lunduniversitypress.lu.se Lund University Press books are published in collaboration with Manchester University Press. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 9 1983 7686 9 hardback ISBN 978 9 1983 7687 6 open access First published 2019 This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence, thanks to the support of Lund University, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Lund University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Lund University Press gratefully acknowledges publication assistance from the Thora Ohlsson Foundation (Thora Ohlssons Stiftelse) Typeset by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited Contents Acknowledgements page vii A note on references and abbreviations ix Introduction 1 1 Scepticism in the Renaissance 10 Sceptics and believers 14 Evidence, authority, and ridicule 19 Histories and stories: facts, fictions, and lies 27 Rhetorical scepticism 33 Submerged scepticism 40 Protestant scepticism and the origins of witchcraft drama 45 2 Witchcraft in Elizabethan drama 58 Gender, scepticism, and magic in Elizabethan England 61 Fedele and Fortunio: the female witch as male magician 77 Classical witches and Elizabethan prophecy 81 The Golden Asse and early modern witchcraft 89 A Midsummer Night’s Dream: witchcraft without witches 97 Joan of Arc, Margery Jourdain, and the historical witch 103 Magic and demonology in Dr Faustus and its competitors 110 3 Witchcraft in Jacobean drama 130 Sophonisba 132 Macbeth 137 The Masque of Queens 155 Frances Howard, court scandal, and The Witch 160 vi Contents 4 The Witch of Edmonton 182 Scepticism in The Witch of Edmonton 184 The devil and sin in The Witch of Edmonton 192 The social and the demonic 200 Evidence and authority in The Witch of Edmonton 206 5 The Late Lancashire Witches 209 Witchcraft in the 1630s 210 Thomas Heywood and witchcraft 217 The play and the case 220 Debating witchcraft in The Late Lancashire Witches 226 Two types of witchcraft 238 6 Witchcraft in the Restoration 244 The nature of spirit and body 247 Witchcraft in the theatre 260 7 The Lancashire Witches 278 Scepticism in The Lancashire Witches 279 Good and bad witchcraft 287 The play and the plot 291 Conclusion 306 Bibliography 320 Index 336 Acknowledgements No project of this length can be completed without a great deal of help, and I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to the many people who have provided advice, support and feedback. The book was written while I was at Lund University, where the higher seminar in English Literature provided a great deal of support, guidance and encouragement, and played a major part in shaping the book. Thanks to all those members of the seminar, past and present, who have commented on my work: Professor Marianne Thormählen, Professor Cian Duffy, Dr Birgitta Berglund, Dr Kiki Lindell, Dr Sara Håkansson, Dr Cecilia Wadsö Lecaros, Dr Ellen Turner, Dr Annika J. Lindskog, Dr Claes Lindskog, Dr Anna Lindhé, Dr Mette Hildeman Sjölin, Associate Professor Alexander Bareis, Professor Jane Mattisson Ekstam, Dr Sanna Melin Schyllert, Katie Anderson Ahlstedt, Charlotte Hansson Webb, and Lisa-Marie Teubler. Outside of Lund, this book owes a great deal to a number of scholars with particular expertise on witchcraft who have contributed to it in a variety of ways. Special mention must be made of Dr Roy Booth of Royal Holloway for his advice on the project: he provided expert knowledge, a critical eye, and an endless supply of good humour. I had the privilege of discussing a draft version of the book at some length with Professor Marion Gibson of the University of Exeter, and I am immensely grateful to her for everything I learned in the course of our conversation. Thanks are also due to both of the peer-reviewers engaged by Lund University Press for their generous and very helpful comments, which improved the book considerably. Several institutions have also been generous in supporting my work. Olof Sagers stipendiefond made it possible for me to spend half a year in London, with access to the British Library’s resources. This time made a major contribution to the book and was spent very happily, as well as very productively. A grant from Stiftelsen Fil. Dr Uno Otterstedts fond allowed me to attend a conference viii Acknowledgements on Demonology at UiT in Tromsö, which was extremely helpful to me, and I would also like to thank the organisers, Professors Liv Helene Willumsen and Rita Voltmer, and all of the participants. In addition, I am particularly grateful to the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities for honouring this book with the 2019 Warburg Prize for an outstanding work of literary history published in Sweden. Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank my family for keeping my feet on the ground and for dragging me out of the early modern period and into the present from time to time. Thanks to my parents, Steve and Linda, and my parents-in-law, Chris and Björn, for all the support, free babysitting, and practical help. Most thanks of all to Charlotte, my wonderful wife and most steadfast supporter; and to Jake and Gabriel, the best sons in the world, for drawing me all those pictures and being so interested in everything. A note on references and abbreviations All references to the Bible are to the King James Version unless otherwise stated. References to all books printed during the early modern period are to electronic copies accessed via the Early English Books Online database. All references to laws (appearing in the format v Elizabeth c. 13) are from The Statutes of the Realm. The following abbreviations have been used: CSPD Calendar of State Papers (Domestic series) ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography OED Oxford English Dictionary SP State Paper Introduction Witchcraft is often thought of, wrongly, as a thing of the past. In fact, it continues to be taken seriously by people all over the world. But because the subject of this study is, specifically, early modern witchcraft and its dramatic representation, it will be necessary to clarify what the term ‘witch’ meant within this specific context. As several early modern authors on witchcraft argued, the meaning of the word has changed over time. The senses in which ancient Latin or Greek authors used the terms that are typically translated as ‘witch’ are distinct from the senses in which sixteenth- and seventeenth- century English people used those terms, as well as from the senses in which the word might be understood in the present. The situation is further complicated by the variety of different understandings of what defined witchcraft in early modern England. Accusations of witchcraft tended to focus on the issue of maleficium – the harm it caused – while theoretical writings on witchcraft were usually more interested in the witches’ supposed pact with the devil. Magical power might be conceived of as inherent in the witch herself, in the objects or words she used, in the spirit with which she bargained, or as merely illusory. Disagreement over these and other issues continued throughout the period during which witchcraft was a criminal offence.1 One assumption of this study – widely but not universally shared today – is that magic operating outside the laws of nature and bargains with the devil are not and never were possible, and that people, both past and present, who believed these things to be possible were, and are, mistaken. Consequently, there can be no definitive 1 Jonathan Barry, Witchcraft and Demonology in South-West England, 1640–1789 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) summarises the key issues (p. 5). 2 Scepticism and belief in English witchcraft drama description of what a witch was, only a description of what a given person or group of people imagined a witch to be. Assuming that witches did not exist in the sense that they were often believed to, it is hardly surprising that early modern society did not reach a consensus on what witchcraft was; the subject was debated for centuries and eventually faded from public discourse without ever having been resolved. No work on early modern witchcraft, therefore, can ignore the fact that there was a wide range of opinion on the matter. Furthermore, it would be misleading simply to rely on an exhaustive list of the various opinions (even assuming all of these were documented). Many early modern people appear to have been quite flexible in what they were prepared to believe, and ideas about witchcraft were often fluid rather than fixed points of reference against which real-life situations might be judged. Many people were open to persuasion and argument, evidence was often open to interpretation, and whether a given proposition about an alleged witch was accepted or not might depend on a variety of local factors.
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