It will be convenient to consider in this connexion a drama largely founded upon Heywood and Brome, and produced nearly half a century later at the Duke’s House, Dorset Garden, Shadwell’s The Lancashire Witches and Teague o Divelly, the Irish Priest, which was first seen in the autumn of 1681 (probably in September). The idea of using magic in a play was obviously suggested to Shadwell by his idolized Ben Jonson’s Masque of Queens, performed at Whitehall, 2 February, 1609. In close imitation of his model Shadwell has further appended copious notes to Acts one, two, three, and five, giving his references for the details of his enchantments. In the Preface (4to, 1682) he naïvely confesses: “For the magical part I had no hopes of equalling Shakespear in fancy, who created his witchcraft for the most part out of his own imagination (in which faculty no man ever excell’d him), and therefore I resolved to take mine from authority. And to that end there is not one action in the Play, nay, scarce a word concerning it, but is borrowed from some antient, or modern witchmonger. Which you will find in the notes, wherein I have presented you a great part of the doctrine of witchcraft, believe it who will.” And he has indeed copious citations from Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Propertius, Juvenal, Tibullus, Seneca, Tacitus, Lucan, Petronius, Pliny, Apuleius, Aristotle, Theocritus, Lucian, Theophrastus; S. Augustine, S. Thomas Aquinas; Baptista Porta; Ben Jonson (The Sad Shepherd); from the Malleus Maleficarum of James Sprenger, O.P., and Henry Institor (Heinrich Kramer), written circa 1485-89, from Jean Bodin’s (1520-96) La Demonomanie des Sorciers, 1580; the Dæmonolatria, 1595, of Nicolas Remy; Disquisitionum Magicarum libri six of Martin Delrio, S.J. (1551-1608); Historia Rerum Scoticarum, Paris, 1527, of Hector Boece (1465-1536); Formicarius, 5 vols., Douai, 1602, of John Nider, O.P. (1380-1438); De Præstigiis Dæmonum, 1563, by the celebrated John Weyer, physician to the Duke of Cleves; De Gentibus Septentrionalibus,⁠[13] Rome, 1555, by Olaus Magnus, the famous Archbishop of Upsala; Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, by Reginald Scot; Dæmonomagia, by Philip Ludwig Elich, 1607; De Strigimagis, by Sylvester Mazzolini, O.P. (1460-1523), Master of the Sacred Palace and champion of the Holy See against the heresiarch Luther; Compendium Maleficarum (Milan, 1608), by Francesco Maria Guazzo of the Congregation of S. Ambrose; Disputatio de Magis (Frankfort, 1584), by Johan Georg Godelmann; Tractatus de Strigiis et Lamiis of Bartolommeo Spina, O.P.; the Decretum (about 1020) of Burchard, Bishop of Worms; the De Sortilegiis (Lyons, 1533) of Paolo Grilland; the De Occulta Philosophia (Antwerp, 1531) of Cornelius Agrippa; the Apologie pour tous les Grands Hommes qui ont este faussement supconnez de Magie (1625) of Gabriel Naudé, librarian to Cardinal Mazarin; De Subtilitate (libri XXI, Nuremberg, 1550) of Girolamo Cardano, the famous physician and astrologer; De magna et occulta Philosophia of Paracelsus; IIII Livres des Spectres (Angers, 1586) by Pierre le Loyer, Sieur de Brosse, of which Shadwell used the English version (1605) A treatise of Specters ... translated by Z. Jones.

It will be seen that no less than forty-one authors, authorities on magic, are quoted by Shadwell in these notes, whilst not infrequently the same author is cited again and again, and extracts of some length, not merely general references, are given.

But for all this parade of learning, perchance because of all this parade of learning, Shadwell’s witch scenes are intolerably clumsy, they are gross without being terrible. Shadwell was a clever dramatist, he was able to draw a character, especially a crank, with quite remarkable vigour, and his scenes are a triumph of photographic realism. True, he could not discriminate and select; he threw his world en masse higgledy piggledy on to the stage, and as even in the reign of the Merry Monarch there were a few tedious folk about, so now and again—but not very often—one chances upon heavy passages in Shadwell’s robust comedies. On the other hand The Sullen Lovers, Epsom Wells, The Virtuoso, Bury Fair, The Squire of Alsatia, The Volunteers, in fact all his native plays, are full of bustle and fun, albeit a trifle riotous and rude as the custom was. Dryden, who very well knew what he was about, for purposes of his own cleverly dubbed Shadwell dull. And dull he has been dubbed ever since by those who have not read him. But Shadwell had not a spark of poetry in his whole fat composition. And so his witches become farcical, yet farcical in a grimy unpleasant way, for we are spared none of the loathsome details of the Sabbat, and should anyone object, why, there is the authority of Remy or Guazzo, the precise passage from Prierias or Burchard to support the author. Indeed we feel that these witches are very real in spite of their materialism. They present a clear picture of one side of the diabolic cult, however crude and crass.

Even so, these incantation scenes are not, I venture to think, the worst thing in the play. The obscene caricature of the Catholic priest, Teague o Divelly, is frankly disgusting beyond words. He is represented as ignorant, idle, lecherous, a liar, a coward, a buffoon, too simiously cunning to be a fool, too basely mean to be a villain. It is a filthy piece of work, malignant and harmful prepense.⁠[14]

But Shadwell showed scant respect for the Protestants too, since Smerk, Sir Edward Hartfort’s chaplain, is described as “foolish, knavish, popish, arrogant, insolent; yet for his interest, slavish.”

It is hardly a matter for surprise that after the play had been in the actors’ hands about a fortnight complaints from such high quarters were lodged with Charles Killigrew, the Master of the Revels, that he promptly sent for the script, which at first he seems to have passed carelessly enough, and would only allow the rehearsals to proceed on condition that a quantity of scurrilous matter was expunged. Even so the dialogue is sufficiently offensive and profane. There was something like a riot in the theatre at the first performance, and the play was as heartily hissed as it deserved. Yet it managed to make a stand: those were the days of the Third Exclusion Bill and rank disloyalty, but the tide was on the turn, a rebel Parliament had been dissolved on the 28th March, on the 31st of August Stephen College, a perjured fanatic doubly dyed in treason and every conceivable rascality, had met his just reward on the gallows, whilst the atrocious Shaftesbury himself was to be smartly laid by the heels in the November following. That part of the dialogue which was not allowed to be spoken on the stage Shadwell has printed in italic letter,⁠[15] and so we plainly see that the censor was amply justified in his demands. The political satire is of the muddiest; the railing against the Church is lewd and rancorous.

Such success as The Lancashire Witches had in the theatre—and it was not infrequently revived—was wholly due to the mechanist and the scenic effects, the “flyings” of the witches, and the music, this last so prominent a feature that Downes does not hesitate to call it “a kind of Opera.”

In Shadwell’s Sabbat scenes the Devil himself appears, once in the form of a Buck Goat and once in human shape, whilst his satellites adore him with disgusting ceremonies. The witches are Mother Demdike, Mother Dickenson, Mother Hargrave, Mal Spencer, Madge, and others unnamed.

Elizabeth Demdike and Jennet Hargreaves belonged to the first Lancashire witch-trials, the prosecutions of 1612; Frances Dickenson and Mal Spencer were involved in the Robinson disclosures of 1633; so it is obvious that Shadwell has intermingled the two incidents. In his play we have a coursing scene where the hare suddenly changes to Mother Demdike; the witches raise a storm and carouse in Sir Edward’s cellar something after the fashion of Madge Gray, Goody Price, and Goody Jones in The Ingoldsby Legends; Mal Spencer bridles Clod, a country yokel, and rides him to a witches’ festival, where Madge is admitted to the infernal sisterhood; the witches in the guise of cats beset a number of persons with horrible scratchings and miauling, Tom Shacklehead strikes off a grimalkin’s paw and Mother Hargreave’s hand is found to be missing: “the cutting off the hand is an old story,” says Shadwell in his notes. It will be seen that the later dramatist took many of his incidents from Heywood and Brome, although it is only fair to add that he has also largely drawn from original sources.

Shortly after the Restoration was published a play dealing with one of the most famous of English sibyls, The Life of Mother Shipton. “A New Comedy. As it was Acted Nineteen dayes together with great Applause.... Written by T[homas] T[homson].” Among the Dramatis Personæ appear Pluto, the King of Hell, with Proserpina, his Queen; Radamon, A chief Spirit; Four other Devils. The scene is “The City of York, or Naseborough Grove in Yorkshire.” It is a rough piece of work, largely patched together from Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and Massinger’s The City Madam, whilst the episodes in which Mother Shipton is concerned would seem to be founded on one of the many old chap-books that relate her marvellous adventures and prophetic skill. Agatha Shipton (her name is usually given as Ursula) is complaining of her hard lot when she encounters Radamon, a demon who holds high rank in the court of Dis. He arranges to meet her later, and returns to his own place to boast of his success. He reappears to her dressed as a wealthy nobleman; he marries her; and for a while she is seen in great affluence and state. At the commencement of Act III she finds herself in her poor cottage again. As she laments Radamon enters, he informs her who he really is, and bestows upon her magical powers. Her fame spreads far and wide, and as popular story tells, the abbot of Beverley in disguise visits her to make trial of her art. She at once recognizes him, and foretells to his great chagrin the suppression of the monasteries with other events. In the end Mother Shipton outwits and discomforts the devils who attempt to seize her, she is vouchsafed a heavenly vision, and turns to penitence and prayer. The whole thing is a crude enough commixture, of more curiosity than value.

There are some well-written episodes in Nevil Payne’s powerful tragedy The Fatal Jealousie,⁠[16] produced at Dorset Garden early in August, 1672. Among the characters we have Witch, Aunt of Jasper, the villain of the piece. Jasper, who is servant to Antonio, applies to his aunt to help him in his malignant schemes. At first he believes she is a genuine sorceress, but she disabuses him and frankly acknowledges:

Her imps Ranter and Swash, Dive, Fop, Snap, Gilt, and Picklock, are slim lads in masquing habits, trained to trickery. None the less they manage an incantation scene to deceive Antonio and persuade him that his wife, Caelia, is false. An “Antick Dance of Devils” which follows is interrupted by the forcible entry of the Watch. The Aunt shows Jasper a secret hiding-place, whereupon he murders her and conceals the body in the hole. He pretends that she was in truth a witch and has vanished by magic. The Captain of the Watch, however, had detected her charlatanry long before, and presently a demon’s vizor and a domino are found on the premises. Later a little boy, who is caught in his devil’s attire, confesses the impostures, and trembling adds that in one of their secret chambers they have discovered their mistress’s corpse stabbed to death. Finally Jasper is unmasked, and only escapes condign punishment by his dagger. The character of the Witch is not unlike that of Heywood’s Wise Woman of Hogsdon, although in The Fatal Jealousie the events take a tragic and bloody turn. Smith acted Antonio; Mrs. Shadwell, Caelia; Mrs. Norris, the Witch; and Sandford was famous in the rôle of Jasper.

There are incantation scenes in Dryden’s tragedies, but these hardly come within our survey, as the magicians are treated romantically, one might even say decoratively, and certainly here no touch of realism is sought or intended. We have the famous episode in The Indian-Queen (produced at the Theatre Royal in January, 1663-4), when Zempoalla seeks Ismeron the prophet who raises the God of Dreams to prophesy her destiny;⁠[17] in the fourth act of Tyrannick Love (Theatre Royal, June, 1669), the scene is an Indian cave, where at the instigation of Placidius the magician Nigrinus raises a vision of the sleeping S. Catharine, various astral spirits appear only to fly before the descent of Amariel, the Saint’s Guardian-Angel; in Œdipus, by Dryden and Lee (Dorset Garden, December, 1678), Teresias plays a considerable part, and Act III is mainly concerned with a necromantic spell that raises the ghost of Laius in the depths of a hallowed grove. In The Duke of Guise, moreover (Theatre Royal, December, 1682), there is something of real horror in the figures of Malicorne and his familiar Melanax, and the scene⁠[18] when the miserable wizard, whose bond is forfeit, is carried shrieking to endless bale, cannot be read without a shudder even after the last moments of Marlowe’s Faustus. Act IV of Lee’s Sophonisba (Theatre Royal, April, 1675) commences with the temple of Bellona, whose priestesses are shown at their dread rites. Cumana is inspired by the divinity, she raves in fury of obsession, there is a dance of spirits, and various visions are evoked.

In Otway’s curious rehandling of Romeo and Juliet which he Latinized as The History and Fall of Caius Marius produced at Dorset Garden in the autumn of 1679, the Syrian witch Martha only appears for a moment to prophesy good fortune to Marius and to introduce a dance of spirits by the waving of her wand.

Charles Davenant’s operatic Circe (Dorset Garden, March, 1676-7) is an amazing distortion of mythological story. There are songs without number, a dance of magicians, storms, dreams, an apparition of Pluto in a Chariot drawn by Black Horses, but all these are very much of the stage, stagey, born of candle-light and violins, hardly to be endured in cold print. Ragusa, the Sorceress in Tate’s Brutus of Alba: or the Enchanted Lovers (Dorset Garden, May, 1678) is a far more formidable figure. Tate has managed his magic not without skill, and the conclusion of Act III, an incantation, was deservedly praised by Lamb. Curiously enough the plot of Brutus of Alba is the story of Dido and Æneas, Vergil’s names being altered “rather than be guilty of a breach of Modesty,” Tate says. But Tate supplied Henry Purcell with the libretto for his opera Dido and Æneas, wherein also witches appear. It must not be forgotten that Macbeth was immensely popular throughout the whole of the Restoration period, when, as has been noted above, the witch scenes were elaborated and presented with every resource of scenery, mechanism, dance, song, and meretricious ornament. Revival followed revival, each more decorative than the last, and the theatre was unceasingly thronged. Duffett undertook to burlesque this fashion, which he did in an extraordinary Epilogue to his skit The Empress of Morocco, produced at the Theatre Royal in the spring of 1674, but for all his japeries Macbeth never waned in public favour.

Spirits in abundance appear in the Earl of Orrery’s unpublished tragedy Zoroastres,⁠[19] the principal character being described as “King of Persia, the first Magician.” He is attended by “several spirits in black with ghastly vizards,” and at the end furies and demons arise shaking dark torches at the monarch whom they pull down to hell, the sky raining fire upon them. It was almost certainly never acted, and is the wildest type of transpontine melodrama.

Edward Ravenscroft’s “recantation play” Dame Dobson, or, The Cunning Woman (produced at Dorset Garden in the early autumn of 1683) is an English version of La Devineresse; ou les faux Enchantements (sometimes known as Madame Jobin), a capital comedy by Thomas Corneille and Jean Donneau de Vise. This French original had been produced in 1679, and both the stage-craft and the adroit way in which the various tricks and conjurations are managed must be allowed to be consummately clever. An English comedy on a similar theme is The Wise Woman of Hogsdon, the intricacies of which are a triumph of technique. La Devineresse was published in 1680 with a frontispiece picturing a grimalkin, a hand of glory, noxious weeds, two blazing torches and other objects beloved of necromancy. There are, moreover, eight folding plates which embellish the little book, and these have no small interest as they depict scenes in the comedy. But Dame Dobson cannot be accounted a play of witchcraft; it is no more than an amusing study of dextrous charlatanry. The protagonist herself⁠[20] is of that immortal sisterhood graced by Heywood’s sibyl, of whom it is said “She is a cunning woman, neither hath she her name for nothing, who out of her ignorance can fool so many that think themselves wise.”

Mrs. Behn, in her amusing comedy The Luckey Chance; or, An Alderman’s Bargain, produced at Drury Lane in the late winter of 1686, 4to, 1687, has made some play with pretended magic in the capital scenes where Gayman (Betterton) is secretly brought by the prentice Bredwel (Bowman), disguised as a devil, to the house of Lady Fulbank (Mrs. Barry). Here he is received by Pert, the maid, who is dressed as an old witch, and conducted to his inamorata’s embraces. But the whole episode is somewhat farcically treated, and it is, of course, an elaborate masquerade for the sake of an intrigue.⁠[21]

Shadwell in 1681 took Witchcraft seriously, and notwithstanding the half-hearted disclaimer in his address “To the Reader” that prefaces The Lancashire Witches I think he was sensible enough to recognize the truth which lies at the core of the matter in spite of the grotesqueness of the formulæ and spells doting hags and warlocks are wont to employ. Witchcraft was still a capital offence when some fifteen years later Congreve lightly laughed it out of court. Foresight (Love for Love), “an illiterate old Fellow, peevish and positive, superstitious, and pretending to understand Astrology, Palmistry, Phisiognomy, Omens, Dreams, etc.,” is in close confabulation with his young daughter’s Nurse, when Angelica his niece trips in to ask the loan of his coach, her own being out of order. He says no, and presses her to remain at home, muttering to himself some old doggerel which bodes no good to the house if all the womenfolk are gadding abroad. The lady fleers him, twits him with jealousy of his young wife: “Uncle, I’m afraid you are not Lord of the Ascendant, ha! ha! ha!” He is obstinate in his refusal; and she retorts: “I can make Oath of your unlawful Midnight Practices; you and the Old Nurse there.... I saw you together, through the Key-hole of the Closet, one Night, like Saul and the Witch of Endor, turning the Sieve and Sheers, and pricking your Thumbs to write poor innocent Servants’ Names in Blood about a little Nutmeg-Grater, which she had forgot in the Caudle-Cup.” “Hussy, Cockatrice,” storms the old fellow beside himself with rage. Angelica mocks him even more bitterly, accuses him and the Nurse of nourishing a familiar, “a young Devil in the shape of a Tabby-Cat,” and with a few last thrusts she departs, trilling with merriment, in a sedan-chair.

To return for a brief space to an earlier generation when it would have hardly been possible, or at least highly inadvisable, to treat Witchcraft in this blithesome mood, of two plays that would almost certainly have been of great interest in this connexion we have only the names, The Witch of Islington, acted in 1597, and The Witch Traveller, licensed in 1623.

In addition to The Masque of Queens, which as has already been noted, served to some extent for a model to Shadwell when inditing his encyclopædic notes on magic, Ben Jonson in that sweet pastoral The Sad Shepherd introduces a Scotch witch, Maudlin. The character is drawn with vigorous strokes; realism mingles with romance.

During the quarrel scene which opens The Alchemist Face threatens Subtle:

Dapper the gull asks Subtle for a familiar, as Face explains (I, 2):

And later in order to trick him thoroughly Dol Common appears as the “Queene of Faerie.” The Queen of Elphin or Elfhame, who is particularly mentioned in the Scotch witch-trials, seems to be identical with the French Reine du Sabbat. In 1670 Jean Weir confessed: “That when she keeped a school at Dalkeith, and teached childering, ane tall woman came to the declarant’s hous when the childering were there; and that she had, as appeared to her, ane chyld upon her back, and one or two at her foot; and that the said woman disyred that the declarant should imploy her to spick for her to the Queen of Farie, and strik and battle in her behalf with the said Queen, (which was her own words).”⁠[22]

Beaumont and Fletcher afford us but few instances of witchcraft in the many dramas that conveniently go under their names. We have, it is true, a she-devil, Lucifera, in The Prophetess, but the incident is little better than clowning. Delphia herself is a severely classical pythoness far removed from the Sawyers, Demdikes, and Dickensons Sulpitia, in The Custom of the County dons a conjurer’s robe and at Hippolita’s bidding blasts Zenocia almost to death by her spells, but yet she is more bawd than witch. Peter Vecchio in The Chances, “a reputed wizard,” is as sharp and cozening a practitioner as Forobosco, the mountebank, a petty pilferer, who is exposed and sent to the galleys at the end of The Fair Maid of the Inn; or Shirley’s Doctor Sharkino⁠[23] whom silly serving-men consult about the loss of silver spoons and napkins; or Tomkis’s Albumazar; nay, Jonson’s Subtle himself.⁠[24]

In Marston’s Sophonisba (4to, 1606) appears Erictho, borrowed from Lucan. The Friar in Chapman’s Bassy d’Ambois (4to, 1607) puts on a magician’s habit, and after a sonorous Latin invocation raises the spirits Behemoth and Cartophylax in the presence of Bussy and Tamyra.

A far more interesting drama than these is Shirley’s S. Patrick for Ireland, acted in Dublin, 1639-40, which has as its theme the conversion of Ireland by S. Patrick and the opposition of the Druids under their leader Archimagus. The character of S. Patrick moves throughout with a quiet spiritual dignity that has true beauty, and the magicians in their baffled potency for evil are only less effective. This drama is a work of stirling merit, to which I would unhesitatingly assign a very high place in Shirley’s theatre. We are shown the various attempts upon S. Patrick’s life: poison is administered in a cup of wine, the Saint drinks and remains unharmed; Milcho, a great officer, whose servant S. Patrick once was, locks him and his friends in a house and fires it. The Christians pass out unscathed through the flames which devour the incendiary. In the last scene whilst S. Patrick sleeps Archimagus summons a vast number of hideous serpents to devour him, but the Apostle of Ireland wakes, and expels for ever all venomous reptiles from his isle, whereon the earth gapes and swallows the warlock alive. Particularly impressive is the arrival of S. Patrick, when as the King and his two sons, his druids and nobles, are gathered in anxious consultation at the gates of their temple, they see passing in solemn procession through the woods a fair company with gleaming crosses, silken banners, bright tapers and incense, what time the sweet music of a hymn strikes upon the ear:

(Now that we have crossed the fierce waves of ocean to Ireland’s coast, and Heaven has blessed its poor fearful wanderers, wending our way along with joy do we see a sunbeam of light gilding these shores.)

As Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus has already been treated in this connexion it may not be altogether impertinent very briefly to consider some three or four other Elizabethan plays in which the Devil appears among the Dramatis Personæ, even if he act no very prominent part. These for the most part fluctuate between the semi-serious and merest buffoonery. Thus the prologue of The Merry Devil of Edmonton (4to, 1608), in which the enchanter Peter Fabell tricks the demon who has come to demand the fulfilment of his contract, is at the opening managed with due decorum, but it soon adopts a lighter, and even trivial, vein. William Rowley’s The Birth of Merlin, or The Childe hath found his Father (not printed until 1662) is a curious medley of farce and romance, informed with a certain awkward vigour and not wholly destitute of poetry. Dekker’s If it be not good, the Divel is in it (4to, 1612), which may be traced to the old prose History of Friar Rush, depicts the exploits of three lesser fiends who are dispatched to spread their master’s kingdom in Naples. It is an unequal play, the satire of which falls very flat, since it is obvious that the poet was not sincere in his extravagant theme.⁠[25]

Ben Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass, acted in 1616, is wholly comic. Pug, “the less devil,” who visits the earth, and engages himself as servant to a Norfolk squire, Fabian Fitzdottrel, is hopelessly outwitted on every occasion by the cunning of mere mortals. Eventually he finds himself lodged in Newgate, and in imminent danger of the gallows were he not rescued by the Vice, Iniquity, by whom he is carried off rejoicing to the nether regions. His fate may be compared with that of Roderigo in Wilson’s excellent comedy Belphegor: or, The Marriage of the Devil (produced at Dorset Garden in the summer of 1690), who with his two attendant devils flies back to his native hell to escape the woes of earth.

In The Devil’s Charter, however, by Barnaby Barnes (1607), we have what is undoubtedly a perfectly serious tragedy, which if not exactly modelled upon, at least owes many hints to Marlowe’s Faustus. It is flamboyant melodrama and wildly unhistorical throughout, a very tophet of infernal horror. The chief character is a loathsome caricature of Pope Alexander VI,⁠[26] and, as we might expect, all the lies and libels of Renaissance satirists and Protestant pamphleteers are heaped together to portray an impossible monster of lust and crime. The filthiest scandals of Burchard, Sanudo, Giustiniani, Filippo Nerli, Guicciardini, Paolo Giovio, Sannazzaro and the Neapolitans, have been employed with one might almost say a scrupulous conscientiousness. The black art, in particular, occupies a very prominent place in these lurid scenes. Alexander has signed a bond with a demon Astaroth, and it is to this contract that all his success is ascribed. In Act IV there is a long incantation when the Pope puts on his magical robes, takes his rod and pentacle, and standing within the circle he has traced conjures in strange terms, commencing a Latin exorcism which tails off into mere gibberish. Various devils appear, and he is shown a vision of Gandia’s murder by Cæsar,⁠[27] with other atrocities. At the climax of the piece we have the banquet with Cardinal Adrian of Corneto, and whilst the guests talk “The Devill commeth and changeth the Popes bottles.” The Borgias are poisoned, and in a far too protracted “Scena Ultima” Alexander discourses and disputes frantically with the demons who appear to mock and torment him. There is the old device of an ambiguous contract; presently a “Devil like a Poast” enters winding a horn to summon the unhappy wretch, who raves and shrieks out meaningless ejaculations as he is dragged away amid thunder and lightning. This sort of thing pandered to the most brutalized appetites of the groundlings, and The Devil’s Charter may be summed up as a disgusting burlesque not without its quota of vile stuff that is so repulsive as to be physically sickening.

Upon a careful consideration of those seventeenth-century plays which have Witchcraft as their main theme, and leaving on one side, for our purpose, the essentially romantic treatment of the subject, however realistic some details of the picture may be, it is, I think, beyond dispute that The Witch of Edmonton in the figure of Mother Sawyer offers us the best contemporary illustration of the Elizabethan witch. The drama itself is one of no ordinary merit and power, whilst the understanding and restraint which set the play apart from its fellows also raises it to the level of genuine tragedy. It should be noticed that we see a witch, so to speak, in the process of making. Mother Sawyer is in truth the victim of the prejudices of the village hinds and ignorant yokels. When she first appears it is merely as a poor old crone driven to desperation by her brutal neighbours; the farmers declare she is a witch, and at length persecution makes her one. She is malignant and evil enough once the compact with the demon has been confirmed; she longs from the first to be revenged upon her enemies and mutters to herself “by what art May the thing called Familiar be purchased?” But, in one sense, she is urged and hounded to her destiny, and the authors, although never doubting her compact with the powers of darkness, her vile and poisonous life, show a detached but very real sympathy for her. It is this touch of humanity, the pathos and pity of the poor old hag, repulsive, wicked, and baleful as she may be, which must place The Witch of Edmonton in my opinion among the greatest and most moving of all Elizabethan plays.

It is no pleasant task to turn now to the theatre of the eighteenth century in this connexion. The witch became degraded; she was comic, burlesqued, buffooned; a mere property for a Christmas pantomime: Harlequin Mother Bunch, Mother Goose, Harlequin Dame Trot, Charles Dibdin’s The Lancashire Witches, or The Distresses of Harlequin⁠[28] whose tinsel, music, and mummery drew all the macaronis and cyprians in London to the Circus during the winter of 1782-3.

Some subtle premonition of the great success of Harrison Ainsworth’s powerful story The Lancashire Witches—for this and the macabre Rookwood are probably the best of the work of a talented writer now unduly depreciated and decried—seems to have suggested to the prolific Edward Fitzball his “Legendary Drama in Three Acts,” The Lancashire Witches, A Romance of Pendle Forest, produced at the Adelphi Theatre, 3 January, 1848. It was quick work, for it was only a month before, 3 December, 1847, that Ainsworth, writing to his friend Crossley of Manchester, states that he has accepted the liberal offer of the Sunday Times—£1000 and the copyright to revert to the author on the completion of the work—that his new romance The Lancashire Witches should make its appearance as a serial in the paper. He had already sketched out the plan, and he must have given Fitzball an idea of this, or at least have allowed the dramatist the use of some few rough notes, for although the play and the novel have little, one might say nothing essential, in common, the chief character in the theatre, Bess of the Woods, “140 years old, formerly Abbess of S. Magdalen’s, doomed for her crimes to an unearthly age,” is none other than the anchoress Isolde de Heton.⁠[29] The fourth scene of the second act presents the ruins of Whalley Abbey by moonlight. During an incantation the picture gradually changes; the broken arches form themselves into perfect masonry; the ivy disappears from the windows to show the ruby and gold of coloured glass; the decaying altar glitters with piled plate and the gleam of myriad tapers. A choir of nuns rises from the grave to dance with spectral gallants. Among the votaries are Nutter, Demdike, and Chattox “Three Weird Sisters, doomed for their frailties to become Witches.” But they utter no word, and have no part save this in the action. This scene must have proved extraordinarily effective upon the stage. It owes much to the haunted convent in Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, produced at the Académie Royale in November, 1831, and given in a piratical form both at Drury Lane and Covent Garden within a few weeks. Nor is it comparable to its original. In Fitzball’s melodrama O. Smith appeared as Gipsy Dalian, a new character; and Miss Faucit (Mrs. Bland) as Bess of the Woods. The play, for what it is, a luridly theatrical and Surrey-side sensation, has merit; but to speak of it in the same breath as Middleton or even as Barnes would be absurd.

Shelley’s genius has with wondrous beauty translated for us scenes from Calderon’s El Magico Prodigioso, one of the loveliest songs of the Spanish nightingale. On another plane, admittedly, but yet, I think, far from lacking a simple comeliness of its own and surely not without most poignant pathos, is Longfellow’s New England Tragedy Giles Corey of the Salem Farms.⁠[30] The honest sincerity of Cotton Mather, the bluff irascible heartiness of Corey himself, the inopportune scepticism of his wife—which to many would seem sound common sense—the hysteria of Mary Walcot, the villainy of John Gloyd, all these are sketched with extraordinary power, a few quiet telling touches which make each character, individual, alert, alive.

In the French theatre we have an early fourteenth-century Miracle de Nostre Dame de Robert le Dyable, and in 1505 was acted Le mystère du Chevalier qui donna sa femme au Diable, à dix personnages. As one might well expect during the long classical period of the drama Witchcraft could have found no place in the scenes of the French dramatists. It would have been altogether too wild, too monstrous a fantasy. And so it is not until the 24 floréal, An XIII (11 June, 1805) that a play which interweaves sorcery as its theme is seen at the Théâtre français, when Les Templiers of Raynouard was given there. A few years later Le Vampire, a thrilling melodrama by Charles Nodier and Carmouche, produced on 13 August, 1820, was to draw all idle Paris to the Porte-Saint-Martin. In 1821 two facile writers quick to gauge the public appetite, Frédéric Dupetit-Mèré and Victor Ducagne, found some favour with La Sorcière, ou l’Orphelin écossais. Alexandre Dumas, and one of his many ghosts Auguste Maquet, collaborated (if one may use the term) in a grandiose five-act drama Urbain Grandier, 1850. La Sorcière Canidie, a one-act play by Aurélien Vivie, produced at Bordeaux in 1888 is of little account. La Reine de l’Esprit (1891) of Maurice Pottecher is founded to some extent on the Comte de Gabalis, whilst the same author’s three-act Chacun cherche son Trésor, “histoire des sorciers” (1899) was not a little helped by the music of Lucien Michelet. There are many excuses for passing over with a mere mention Les Noces de Sathan (1892), a “drama ésoterique,” by Jules Bois, and Les Basques ou la Sorcière d’Espelette, a lyric drama in three acts by Loquin and Mégret de Belligny, produced at Bordeaux in 1892, has an interest which is almost purely local. Alphonse Tavan’s Les Mases (sorciers), a legendary drama of five acts of alternating prose and verse seen in 1897 was helped out by every theatrical resource, a ballet, chorus, mechanical effects, and confident advertisement. Serge Basset’s Vers le Sabbat “évocation de sorcellerie en un acte” which appeared in the same year need not be seriously considered. Nor does an elaborate episode “Le Sabbat et la Herse Infernale,” wherein Mons. Benglia appeared as Satan, that was seen in the Folies Bergère revue, Un Soir de Folie, 1925-6, call for more than the briefest passing mention.

In more recent days Victor Sardou’s La Sorcière is a violent, but effective, melodrama. Produced at the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt, 15 December, 1903, with De Max as Cardinal Ximenes and Sarah Bernhardt as the moresque Zoraya, it obtained a not undeserved success. The locale of the tragedy is Toledo, anno domini 1506; Act IV, the Inquisition scene; and Act V, the square before the Cathedral with the grim pyre ready for the torch, were—owing to the genius of a great actress—truly harrowing. Of course it is very flamboyant, very unbalanced, very unhistorical, but in its gaudy theatrical way—all the old tricks are there—La Sorcière had an exciting thrill for those who were content to be unsophisticated awhile.

John Masefield’s adaptation from the Norwegian of Wiers-Jennsen, The Witch,⁠[31] a drama in four acts, is a very different thing. Here we have psychology comparable to that of Dekker and Ford. Nor will the performances of Miss Janet Achurch as Merete Beyer and Miss Lillah McCarthy as Anne Pedersdotter easily be forgotten. As a picture of the horror of Witchcraft in cold Scandinavia, the gloom and depression of formidable fanaticism engendered by Lutheran dogma and discipline with the shadow of destiny lowering implacably over all, this is probably the finest piece of work dealing in domestic fashion with the warlock and the sorceress that has been seen on the English stage since the reign of wise King James three hundred years ago.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VII