Servants of God and Slaves of the Devil?: Witchcraft, Tyranny, and Skepticism on the Early Modern Stage

Abstract

When King James I ascended the English throne in 1603, his book Daemonologie, a treatise on witchcraft originally published in 1597, was reprinted in London, and James’s fascination for witchcraft was soon widely known. In 1606, Macbeth was performed, and that play that included witchcraft was soon to be followed by several other witchcraft plays. Some scholars have interpreted this Jacobean trend as a compliment to the king’s interests (Paul, Kearnan). However, although these plays draw on James’s demonological interests, they do not use the topic of witchcraft to flatter his authority. Rather, they use witch characters to expose corruption in royal courts and community leaders alike, representing tyranny and not witchcraft as the true threat to a nation.

In early modern literature, the king and the witch are often represented as opposites. According to Newes from Scotland, “the King is the child & servant of God, and [the witches] but servants to the devil” (D3r). This binary often works to flatter the monarch; Ben Jonson’s Masque of Queens, for example, uses witches as a foil to royalty. However, I argue that the plays I discuss turn the blame on rulers and power structures, breaking down the established binary between the witch and the godly ruler, or the witch and the godly community. Dismantling the binary from both ends, these plays build on contemporary skepticism about witchcraft and witch trials to represent rulers as tyrants and communities as corrupt. Removing the opposition between witch and legitimate ruler, they portray the authorities as inept and ineffective (The Merry Wives of Windsor), illegitimate and tyrannical (Macbeth), morally bankrupt (The Witch), paranoid and vacillating (The Tempest), or corrupt (The Witch of Edmonton). By featuring only witches and corrupt leaders, without a just ruler to represent a clear binary opposite, these plays then contrast corrupt leadership with witchcraft to demonstrate that tyranny is the greater of the two evils. Using witchcraft to expose the corruption of both royal and community leadership, these plays critique power structures rather than legitimizing them.