Matters of Witchcraft in Early Modern English Drama explores material culture and its role in shaping ideas about the occult. In focusing on matter and material practice, this edited collection provides a sustained investigation into early moderns’ embodied knowledge and sensory experiences as reflected in early modern theatre.Animal bodies and plant matter, the material force of language, stage properties associated with the performance of witchcraft, source texts, the unseen matter of the occult, material evidence in witchcraft accusations, witches’ involvement with domestic products and processes – matter in its many forms reveals itself as crucial to the performance of witchcraft, on and off stage. The essays in this volume use a range of methodological approaches including animal studies and posthumanism, disability studies, queer and feminist studies, premodern critical race studies, book history, and performance studies. Contributors cover fresh approaches to well-known witchcraft plays like Macbeth and The Witch of Edmonton and provide new critical interventions of less-studied plays like Knevet’s Rhodon and Iris, Heywood’s Wise Woman of Hoxton, and Jones’s Adrasta. The collection expands the fields of early modern witchcraft studies and early modern cultural studies in exciting new directions.
Molly Hand is an Associate Lecturer of English at Florida State University, USA.Andrew Loeb is an Assistant Professor of English at Trent University, Canada.
Introduction: Matters of Witchcraft in Early Modern English DramaMolly Hand (Florida State University, USA) and Andrew Loeb (Trent University, Canada)Part 1: Knowledge and Labour“Th’ ingredience of our cauldron”: Dead Animal Matter in Early Modern Witchcraft NarrativesKeith Botelho (Kennesaw State University, USA)“Get him in bonds”: Manuscript Conjuring and Labour in The Devil is an AssDarryl Chalk (University of Southern Queensland, Australia)“A Beldam much renown’d”: Poneria’s Unnatural Magic in Ralph Knevet’s Rhodon and IrisKara McCabe (Tufts University, USA)Part 2: Bodies and Appetites“Hated like a sickness”: Disease and Disability in The Witch of EdmontonKatey Roden (Gonzaga University, USA)Sex, Satan, and Sensation: The Materiality of Bodies in Witchcraft BeliefHannah Korell (University of Wisconsin Plattville, USA)“I have supp’d full with horrors”: Witchcraft as Queer Famishment in Shakespeare’s MacbethMel Vipperman-Cohen (California State University – Fullerton, USA)Part 3: Space and StructureThreshold WitchcraftKaitlyn Culliton (Texas A&M University, USA) Anarchitectural Matter: The Queer Body of the Early Modern WitchSaraya Haddad (University of Birmingham, UK) Part 4: Page and StageOut of the Mouths of Babes: Exploring the Nature of Child Testimony in The Late Lancashire WitchesMelissa Pullara (Mount Royal University, Canada) Textual Spectacle and Immaterial Materiality in John Jones’s AdrastaAndrew Loeb (Trent University, Canada) Why Look at Animal Familiars?Molly Hand (Florida State University, USA) BibliographyIndex