The Witch was a wild ride, and I'm (once again) looking forward to tomorrow's discussion.
I'm most interested in looking at The Witch as a satire against the Roman Catholic church. While the Witch's setting seems enough to cue its readers/viewers that Middleton has something to say about Catholicism, he also embeds catholic allusions throughout the text. By doing so, I wonder if Middleton is somehow attempting to equate Catholicism (and its rituals/idolatry) to witchcraft.
First, the idea of forgiveness (and salvation) via confession is repeated throughout the play. Francisca "confesses" to Antonio in Act 4.3 so that he won't murder her. The Duke forgives the Duchess "who, though her intent sinned, yet she makes amends / with grief and honour, virtue's noblest ends" (5.3, ln. 129-130). Surely the audience would have been able to see flimsy these confessions were--especially because many people in England were being put to death for crimes much less severe. They would have been able to see, too, that the is a conspicuous absence of the divine in these confessions. The confessions are shown to be superficial in that the confessors are being absolved of their sins by fellow mortals (and equally treacherous ones at that).
Next, Middleton seems to satirize Communion. This is most explicit in the case of the "poisoned" wine (Act 5.1). When Antonio serves Aberzanes and Francisca the wine he thinks its infused with some greater power-- though in this case the eucharist causes death and not eternal life. As we've talked about previously, witches supposedly enjoyed and drew strength from performing corrupted versions of Christian acts. So in one way, if we are to believe that this exchange represents communion (which I do), then we see that Antonio's behavior is witchy. But what's more, we learn that Hermio never put the poison in the wine. So Antonio's belief in the power of the object is misplaced. The wine is just wine. There's nothing special about it.
Also we may see Almachildes meal with Hecate as a sort of communion. He communes with an agent of the devil via the consumption of food-- the only thing we know he eats for sure is meat, i.e. flesh (2.1, 228).
Hecate and her fellow witches might be seen to represent papal authority. Unlike in England, where the king is divine, Hecate's power seems to supersede that of the state. In order for anyone to act (Sebastian, Almachildes, the Duchess) they must first visit Hecate, who is herself just an agent in the divine/unholy hierarchy.
In their introduction to Three Jacobean witchcraft plays, the editors note that "an easy commerce seems to exist in which the human world is viewed by the witches largely as a means to satisfy their lechery" (17). The idea of commerce related to religious (or unholy) authority seems to resonate with some of the Protestant accusations brought against the Catholic church.
Furthermore, like the Pope or a priest, Hecte is unable to annul weddings: "We cannot disjoin wedlock. 'Tis of heaven's fastening" (1.2, 72-73).
Is the satire/criticism that I'm reading in this play somehow related to its "failure"? Or was the play unpopular and/or censored because his satire overstepped some bounds-- is he satirizing more than Catholic authority?
Aesthetically, I felt that Middleton’s The Witch (1613?) was rather unreadable. Little wonder that Middleton describes it in his epistle as an “ignorantly ill-fated labour.” I found the scenes to be short and choppy. I was more entertained by Hecate and her community of witches than the courtiers: Isabella, Sebastian, Antonio, and Florida all seemed to me to be blank “types,” the luckless maiden, the unrequited young man, the cuckold, the whore. The cunning and pregnant Francisca was somewhat interesting, but even she had little psychological depth (unlike Shakespeare’s characters). The ending also borders on the burlesque. Should we believe the Duke’s all’s well statement, particularly his assessment of the Duchess’s turn of heart? Is Middleton parodying the kind of deus-ex-machina resolution of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (1611)? I think the play’s unreadable action and characters suggests that it is not meant to be a serious play, rather something much more transgressive and subversive. Unlike the *Tragedy* of Macbeth, Middleton’s play is a *Tragicomedy.* In the play’s very generic indeterminacy, Middleton transgresses. The mixing of the genres is palpable in the last act, particularly in the excess of action (Antonio chasing his sister with a sword), the silly manner of his death (“From a trap-door fell into a depth” 5.3.30), and the unbelievable reconciliation of the Duke and the Duchess.
Ravenna, where the action is set, is mundo inverso, the inversed world of Bakhtin. It’s a fairly troubling world. Transgression occurs at all levels of society. Family members (brother/sister, husband wife) double-cross each other quite ruthlessly. Furthermore, the private disobedience in the family becomes manifested in civil/public disobedience: the Duke’s apparent absence opens up a vacuum of authority which results in “insurrection among the people” (4.1.14). Given Middleton’s set-up of a topsy-turvy world, where do Hecate and her brood fit in? Despite their marginalized status, they seem to occupy a kind of authority status. As the editors Corbin and Sedge suggest, the Witches display impressive professionalism in their careful measuring and preparation of the magical charms (16). The witches’ communal and domestic relations (particularly between the doting Hecate and her son Firestone) are also more stable than that of the courtiers’. They, at least, do not try to back-stab one another continually. Finally, the Witches are rather fun, albeit macabre, figures. Unlike Shakespeare’s witches who are spectral figures, appearing and disappearing at random, Middleton’s witches seem to have a fixed location in the city. Sebastian, Almachildes, the Duchess all know where to seek them. In other words, Middleton’s witches are very much integrated with their community—like any other professional class—the apothecary, the cobbler, etc. Is his “domestic” appropriation of witches another instance of Middleton’s transgressive agenda? What do the witches ultimately represent in this play? When human characters walk in and out of the witches’ space freely, does it suggest that “that which cannot be known” has been known, and thus contained?
I was really stuck by Penny's comments about the "domestication" of the witches in The Witch as evidenced by the fact that everyone in the market for a spell or two knows where to find Hecate and her group. Though these witches seem to have far more power at times than those in Macbeth (i.e. these witches actually cast spells that DO things, rather than just relating cryptic riddles that may or may not prompt some one else's actions), these witches seem far more at the service of the mere mortals in the play. As Penny points out, Macbeth's witches come and go mysteriously and at their own whim, while Hecate and co. seem firmly rooted to particular times and places (something the notes in my text made numerous references to, what with Hecate's continual referencing of midnights and moon cycles, etc.) The witches' firm rooting in time and place, combined with Middleton's attempts to be as accurate as possible with his list of spells' ingredients and so forth (at least according to the notes in my text), makes me feel that Penny is right in her impulse that this play is trying to contain "that which cannot be known." At times, this seems almost like a scholarly attempt to "pin down" or define witchcraft and witches -- a Scot-like project, perhaps. The end result, for me at least, are witches that -- though they might offer up dead babies on stage for magical purposes and kill the redheaded girl in order use her "three ounces" in a spell -- are far less mysterious, frightening, and powerful than those in Macbeth. So, I guess the containment worked, as far as my reading experience is concerned.
Greetings Class, I am writing you all from the WLA Conference in Tacoma, Washington. I am trying to consolidate my reactions to the Middleton play, with the hopes that my ideas can contribute to the discussion, but as I am at a pay-for-internet-use terminal, my contributions will be short and to thee point.
I see in Middleton’s play a main-plot and a subplot. Those human and those more concerned wit hwitches, ill-will, and phantasmagoria. Much different, than Macbeth, where witchcraft seems to serve the prophecy of the protagonist’s fate, the witchcraft in Middleton’s play seems to be a “sepulcher” using the Duke’s final words at the lay’s end, where individual characters retrieve the darker elements of revenge, deception, lust-possession, and betrayal that inhabit the characters of the main-plot.
Moreover, I am particularly taken with the ways certain main-plot actors are possessed in this play. The Duchess is possessed with revenge during the ceremonial passing of the Soldier’s Cup (Her father’s skull) in Act 1.2. her “Aside” is juxtaposed with Francisca’s “Aside” which reveals her inconspicuousness in bearing an illegitimate pregnancy. This Ceremony of Conquest seems to give way to a more wrathful possession that Antonio succumbs to in the end of Act 4.
In addition, I am rather interested in Almachides, described in the Dramatis Personae as a “Fantastical gentlemen”, and how he seems to muse in Act 4.1. on what, I believe, is a relationship between witchcraft (its relevance to the subplot) and subversion and discontent (which functions quite explicitly in the main plot), where he notes: “I know a bawd from an aqua vite shop, a strumpet from a wild fire, and a beadle from brimstone.” I take this play to be heavily saturated in irony, and at this point, I believe Middleton himself is trumping up here through Almachides, when he continues: “Already there’s an insurrection/ among the people; they are in arms/ not out of any reason but their wills/ which in them their saints sweating and swearing/ out of their zeal to rudeness.” (Italics are my emphasis). This passage is the most elusive and the most dynamic in the play, and I feel this monologue is the hinge on which the play turns, exposing the corruption of the Duchess, juxtaposed with the graceful transformation of Sebastian. Finally, and this will be a larger question that I may want to pose in my panel-paper for this class, but I was curious about the role of melancholy in the works we’ve covered in this unit, and how it extends to characters who seem born of lack and loss. Specifically, I am thinking of Lady Macbeth, who unsexes her own lack, who recreates the phallus and attempts to bestow it upon her own husband in Macbeth. In Middleton’s play, I am curious about Sebastian, and how he seems propelled by melancholy, but at which point does he seem to defeat it here? I found Act 4.1. to be a very provocative place in the poem, where Sebastian admits, “I cannot deceive her, ‘twere too sinful;/ There’s more religion in my love than so. What if not religious paternalistic authority, what but a “law of the Father” relinquishes Sebastian from his immediate loss?
I’ve been enjoying The Witch by thinking about the triple irony of the performative power of Latin incantation in the play. First, the Latin is invoked to construct and express an intimate knowledge of the dark arts. In turn, by one’s disclosure of her ability to wield such fragments/aspects/charms of “real” witchcraft, she seemingly certifies herself to the public as powerful, intimidating, diabolical, and fearsome. To contextualize that characterization, we can look again to Scot, whom Middleton has at times “taken over verbatim” according to Corbin and Sedge(15). More specifically, throughout The Discoverie of Witchcraft, Scot mentions the panicky, pervasive paranoia of the public towards witches in their midst, e.g. “the people would be worse willing to accuse [witches] for feare least at their returne home, they worke revenge upon them” (11), and these witches, in their flagrant diabolical certainty, undermine good Christian society because “they denie God, and all religion” (Scot 18). More importantly here, that fear is encoded in the illegibility of their trade to the common English citizen, who more often than not lacked the training in Latin to begin to approach and attempt to understand the secretive workings of the witches (thereby making such citizens dependent upon those in society who were in fact literate in Latin, such as the clergy or the educated royals. How systematically convenient….)
Then, in The Witch, Latin crops up in conspicuous moments, flashing its conspicuous quasi-authority at presumably selective moments requiring some bewitching mystery for the common Jacobean audience member. Hence, in II.ii.11-24, the audience realizes more emotively (for Middleton’s intent) the surprise of Almachildes through his ‘discoverie’ of the inscribed charm. And therein comes some of the humor as the Latin translations accompany the Latin, thereby creating a dramatic dependence of the unlearned audience member upon the text (and Middleton mediated through Almachildes) for its power, its meaning, while also serving as a sort of public initiation into the unlocking of a smidgen of witchcraft’s mystery by decoding its encrypted Latin secrets. And, again, the Middleton is devilishly purloined from Scot, assigning here, too, a layer of ironic verbal/textual humor…. [Tangentially (but interestingly for you, I hope!), this makes me think, too, of Scot’s explanation of the lack of 18th century prophets being a signal of infidelity because “our salvation [already] is contained in the word of god: our faith is already confirmed, and our church established by miracles; so as now to seeke for them, is a pointe of infidelitie” (86).]
Similarly, but with more intention to summon authority through performativity, Hecate in V.ii.18-24 utters her ostensibly sinister invective in Latin. Of course, as aforementioned by Trisha (I think), this grande dame of the darkside is but herself a subservient initiate. Nevertheless, her sustained utterance must’ve been more frightful in a certain regard for Jacobean audience members on account of its ominous incomprehensibility in the devil’s ‘toong’, and therefore its tinge of danger in utterance by the player. Of note, Scot, too, plays with this performative manipulation of audience via a modulation of his proximity to disclosure of secrets/Truth through language. More specifically, in a predominantly English-only passage of Book XII, Ch. 10 (in the sections, fittingly, on “charms”), he refrains from divulging the ingredients for witches’ spells to create “holie water” because such a list of the necessary ingredients “would be too long” (135). Right…. However, in Book XV, Chapter XV (subtitled in English “The making of the holie water”), Scot then offers the prayers in a sustained, incantatory series of Latin paragraphs, which are punctuated by only the most brief and superficial of English instructions, such as “To the water saie also ad followeth” (244-5).
Perhaps, then, the third layer of irony to consider is our retrospective ability to see this bilingual writing in The Witch (and in Scot and in Marlowe, for ex.) as a mere writerly ploy to intensify the emotional enthrallment of audience members, particularly in instances where the writer needs to finagle undeserved authority out of what Penny aptly called “blank ‘types’…with little psychological depth” in scenes of “flimsy” dramatic merit, as Bryan writes? Thus, to put it succinctly, I'm interested in any and all comments tomorrow stemming from our perceptions of characterization and setting in The Witch, especially with regard to the rhetorical use of Latin, and how that might correlate to conventions of the Jacobean theater.
Like Trish, I find myself agreeing with Penny's points about the domestication and integration of the witches (especially Hecate) into the world of Middleton's play.
In contrast to the witches in Macbeth which operate on the periphery and contribute no direct action other than cryptic prophecy, Middleton's witches seem to locate themselves at the nexus of the society and bridge the concerns and ambitions of the various characters from Almachildes to the Duchess. This fixing of position and apparent subservience to the state/nobility suggests that the witchcraft then is something of a trade, the witches being practitioners of a craft who produce a product or service for their patrons.
This construction of a "witch" as a necessary facilitator of the play's action puts the witches at the dead center of the narrative and suggest that all significant action and development must pass through the witch as mediator. However, the witches do not interfere with free will, but simply enable transactions and exchanges of ill will to occur.
Middleton's generous sampling of Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft illustrates precisely why such detailed treatises may have been counterproductive. Rather than debunking the witch, Scot's work serves as the means by which a witch is constructed in popular culture.
Witchcraft in some respects comes across in a weaker flavor than that of Macbeth or King James' Demonologie. While capable of creating love charms and hexes, these witches do not possess power equal to or greater than that of the church (eg. a wedding vow cannot be undone). Fear seems to be inspired more by the eeriness of the unknown Latin, than by the onstage actions of the witches. They are also represented as somewhat humorous, wise to the weakness of human nature. Their powers are not immediate or even innate, but also negotiated with each transaction and requiring time for completion. The charms they produce (as in the case of Almachildes' charm given to Amoretta) can be foiled by normal means -- accidents of nature, rather than the intervention of the supernatural. In general, witches are not so much demonic as they are merely the external representations of ill-nature of the characters who seek them out. Perhaps in a somewhat Freudian way, the witches might be seen as these characters' mechanism of wish fulfillment?
Like Penny, I found much of the play somewhat fraught with textual difficulties. Nevertheless, the way in which the witches’ position in and relationship to society was of particular interest to me. (Forgive me here for bringing in other texts, but my classes are influencing one another at this point in the term!) For instance, the very odd relationship between Hecate and her son Firestone prompted in me an analysis of the possible role of magic in exchange. Lev-Strauss’ thesis, that women are values and signs that must be exchanged in order to maintain social cohesion, is particularly interesting when you think about the incest in the play. By refusing to submit to the rule of exogamy and thereby maintaining her own bizarre commerce with society through magic, Hecate finds yet another level on which to be utterly transgressive. The idea of magic being the good that binds the mini- , meta- economy between witchcraft and the mortal world is a provocative one : what kind of economy is it that operates around the kind of phantasmatic trade that witchcraft is? Furthermore, what is the relationship between fear / social anxiety and this marketplace for invisibility and superstition? Isn’t is the case that this is a self-enclosed economy of the same and isn’t moreover possibly the case that the very notion of magic itself requires such an economy to exist?
Sorry guys! I've been trying to alter my profile by computer seems stuck on the profile of my former student. So, for the time bing, Carolyn is Keisha.
I'll focus on the witches, because it was there I tried to salvage my interest in this text. I had hoped to develop some kind of Marxist reading, as, while Hecate's boiling that first potion of unbaptized baby, et al., she speaks of a farmer and a wife and reveals something of a motive for her witchery: "They denied me often flour, barm and milk, goose-grease and tar, when I ne'er hurt their charmings, their brew-locks, nor their batches, nor forspoke any of their breedings."
Much of the scholarship on this play mentions how Middleton took a laundry list of witch-specific acts and ingredients from Discovery of Witchcraft, while leaving behind all of Scot's scepticism. I agree with that, for the most part, but see in the quoted line above a hint of Scot's scepticism. He writes in Chapter IX about melancholie and how it induces some women to "imagine they are witches and by witchcraft can worke wonders, and doo what they list."
Middleton's witches struck me as this: just women, members of the community. They are interested in earthly delights (incubus, succubus) petty conflicts with neighbors, and, in Hecate, the doings of one's son: "You had rather hunt after strange women still than lie with your own mothers."
These witches are so terrestrial -- professionals, as Neil suggests, very much a part of the community. Their is no sense of temptation, nothing threatening about them in my reading.
What I found so engaging about MacBeth was that we couldn't say one way or another if the witches were real (Banquo's shared sighting complicates that matter). They were unreal in all the ways that Middleton's witches are mundane. Were they the ambition in MacBeth's brain, his earthly desires personified? Certainly they weren't mere commodities, as Middleton's players seem: spells you pull off the shelf.
9 comments:
The Witch was a wild ride, and I'm (once again) looking forward to tomorrow's discussion.
I'm most interested in looking at The Witch as a satire against the Roman Catholic church. While the Witch's setting seems enough to cue its readers/viewers that Middleton has something to say about Catholicism, he also embeds catholic allusions throughout the text. By doing so, I wonder if Middleton is somehow attempting to equate Catholicism (and its rituals/idolatry) to witchcraft.
First, the idea of forgiveness (and salvation) via confession is repeated throughout the play. Francisca "confesses" to Antonio in Act 4.3 so that he won't murder her. The Duke forgives the Duchess "who, though her intent sinned, yet she makes amends / with grief and honour, virtue's noblest ends" (5.3, ln. 129-130). Surely the audience would have been able to see flimsy these confessions were--especially because many people in England were being put to death for crimes much less severe. They would have been able to see, too, that the is a conspicuous absence of the divine in these confessions. The confessions are shown to be superficial in that the confessors are being absolved of their sins by fellow mortals (and equally treacherous ones at that).
Next, Middleton seems to satirize Communion. This is most explicit in the case of the "poisoned" wine (Act 5.1). When Antonio serves Aberzanes and Francisca the wine he thinks its infused with some greater power-- though in this case the eucharist causes death and not eternal life. As we've talked about previously, witches supposedly enjoyed and drew strength from performing corrupted versions of Christian acts. So in one way, if we are to believe that this exchange represents communion (which I do), then we see that Antonio's behavior is witchy. But what's more, we learn that Hermio never put the poison in the wine. So Antonio's belief in the power of the object is misplaced. The wine is just wine. There's nothing special about it.
Also we may see Almachildes meal with Hecate as a sort of communion. He communes with an agent of the devil via the consumption of food-- the only thing we know he eats for sure is meat, i.e. flesh (2.1, 228).
Hecate and her fellow witches might be seen to represent papal authority. Unlike in England, where the king is divine, Hecate's power seems to supersede that of the state. In order for anyone to act (Sebastian, Almachildes, the Duchess) they must first visit Hecate, who is herself just an agent in the divine/unholy hierarchy.
In their introduction to Three Jacobean witchcraft plays, the editors note that "an easy commerce seems to exist in which the human world is viewed by the witches largely as a means to satisfy their lechery" (17). The idea of commerce related to religious (or unholy) authority seems to resonate with some of the Protestant accusations brought against the Catholic church.
Furthermore, like the Pope or a priest, Hecte is unable to annul weddings: "We cannot disjoin wedlock. 'Tis of heaven's fastening" (1.2, 72-73).
Is the satire/criticism that I'm reading in this play somehow related to its "failure"? Or was the play unpopular and/or censored because his satire overstepped some bounds-- is he satirizing more than Catholic authority?
Aesthetically, I felt that Middleton’s The Witch (1613?) was rather unreadable. Little wonder that Middleton describes it in his epistle as an “ignorantly ill-fated labour.” I found the scenes to be short and choppy. I was more entertained by Hecate and her community of witches than the courtiers: Isabella, Sebastian, Antonio, and Florida all seemed to me to be blank “types,” the luckless maiden, the unrequited young man, the cuckold, the whore. The cunning and pregnant Francisca was somewhat interesting, but even she had little psychological depth (unlike Shakespeare’s characters). The ending also borders on the burlesque. Should we believe the Duke’s all’s well statement, particularly his assessment of the Duchess’s turn of heart? Is Middleton parodying the kind of deus-ex-machina resolution of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (1611)? I think the play’s unreadable action and characters suggests that it is not meant to be a serious play, rather something much more transgressive and subversive. Unlike the *Tragedy* of Macbeth, Middleton’s play is a *Tragicomedy.* In the play’s very generic indeterminacy, Middleton transgresses. The mixing of the genres is palpable in the last act, particularly in the excess of action (Antonio chasing his sister with a sword), the silly manner of his death (“From a trap-door fell into a depth” 5.3.30), and the unbelievable reconciliation of the Duke and the Duchess.
Ravenna, where the action is set, is mundo inverso, the inversed world of Bakhtin. It’s a fairly troubling world. Transgression occurs at all levels of society. Family members (brother/sister, husband wife) double-cross each other quite ruthlessly. Furthermore, the private disobedience in the family becomes manifested in civil/public disobedience: the Duke’s apparent absence opens up a vacuum of authority which results in “insurrection among the people” (4.1.14). Given Middleton’s set-up of a topsy-turvy world, where do Hecate and her brood fit in? Despite their marginalized status, they seem to occupy a kind of authority status. As the editors Corbin and Sedge suggest, the Witches display impressive professionalism in their careful measuring and preparation of the magical charms (16). The witches’ communal and domestic relations (particularly between the doting Hecate and her son Firestone) are also more stable than that of the courtiers’. They, at least, do not try to back-stab one another continually. Finally, the Witches are rather fun, albeit macabre, figures. Unlike Shakespeare’s witches who are spectral figures, appearing and disappearing at random, Middleton’s witches seem to have a fixed location in the city. Sebastian, Almachildes, the Duchess all know where to seek them. In other words, Middleton’s witches are very much integrated with their community—like any other professional class—the apothecary, the cobbler, etc. Is his “domestic” appropriation of witches another instance of Middleton’s transgressive agenda? What do the witches ultimately represent in this play? When human characters walk in and out of the witches’ space freely, does it suggest that “that which cannot be known” has been known, and thus contained?
I was really stuck by Penny's comments about the "domestication" of the witches in The Witch as evidenced by the fact that everyone in the market for a spell or two knows where to find Hecate and her group. Though these witches seem to have far more power at times than those in Macbeth (i.e. these witches actually cast spells that DO things, rather than just relating cryptic riddles that may or may not prompt some one else's actions), these witches seem far more at the service of the mere mortals in the play. As Penny points out, Macbeth's witches come and go mysteriously and at their own whim, while Hecate and co. seem firmly rooted to particular times and places (something the notes in my text made numerous references to, what with Hecate's continual referencing of midnights and moon cycles, etc.) The witches' firm rooting in time and place, combined with Middleton's attempts to be as accurate as possible with his list of spells' ingredients and so forth (at least according to the notes in my text), makes me feel that Penny is right in her impulse that this play is trying to contain "that which cannot be known." At times, this seems almost like a scholarly attempt to "pin down" or define witchcraft and witches -- a Scot-like project, perhaps. The end result, for me at least, are witches that -- though they might offer up dead babies on stage for magical purposes and kill the redheaded girl in order use her "three ounces" in a spell -- are far less mysterious, frightening, and powerful than those in Macbeth. So, I guess the containment worked, as far as my reading experience is concerned.
--Trisha
Greetings Class,
I am writing you all from the WLA Conference in Tacoma, Washington. I am trying to consolidate my reactions to the Middleton play, with the hopes that my ideas can contribute to the discussion, but as I am at a pay-for-internet-use terminal, my contributions will be short and to thee point.
I see in Middleton’s play a main-plot and a subplot. Those human and those more concerned wit hwitches, ill-will, and phantasmagoria. Much different, than Macbeth, where witchcraft seems to serve the prophecy of the protagonist’s fate, the witchcraft in Middleton’s play seems to be a “sepulcher” using the Duke’s final words at the lay’s end, where individual characters retrieve the darker elements of revenge, deception, lust-possession, and betrayal that inhabit the characters of the main-plot.
Moreover, I am particularly taken with the ways certain main-plot actors are possessed in this play. The Duchess is possessed with revenge during the ceremonial passing of the Soldier’s Cup (Her father’s skull) in Act 1.2. her “Aside” is juxtaposed with Francisca’s “Aside” which reveals her inconspicuousness in bearing an illegitimate pregnancy. This Ceremony of Conquest seems to give way to a more wrathful possession that Antonio succumbs to in the end of Act 4.
In addition, I am rather interested in Almachides, described in the Dramatis Personae as a “Fantastical gentlemen”, and how he seems to muse in Act 4.1. on what, I believe, is a relationship between witchcraft (its relevance to the subplot) and subversion and discontent (which functions quite explicitly in the main plot), where he notes: “I know a bawd from an aqua vite shop, a strumpet from a wild fire, and a beadle from brimstone.” I take this play to be heavily saturated in irony, and at this point, I believe Middleton himself is trumping up here through Almachides, when he continues: “Already there’s an insurrection/ among the people; they are in arms/ not out of any reason but their wills/ which in them their saints sweating and swearing/ out of their zeal to rudeness.” (Italics are my emphasis). This passage is the most elusive and the most dynamic in the play, and I feel this monologue is the hinge on which the play turns, exposing the corruption of the Duchess, juxtaposed with the graceful transformation of Sebastian.
Finally, and this will be a larger question that I may want to pose in my panel-paper for this class, but I was curious about the role of melancholy in the works we’ve covered in this unit, and how it extends to characters who seem born of lack and loss. Specifically, I am thinking of Lady Macbeth, who unsexes her own lack, who recreates the phallus and attempts to bestow it upon her own husband in Macbeth. In Middleton’s play, I am curious about Sebastian, and how he seems propelled by melancholy, but at which point does he seem to defeat it here? I found Act 4.1. to be a very provocative place in the poem, where Sebastian admits, “I cannot deceive her, ‘twere too sinful;/ There’s more religion in my love than so. What if not religious paternalistic authority, what but a “law of the Father” relinquishes Sebastian from his immediate loss?
Thanks to Stephan for redirecting my post.
I should see you all in class by late Friday.
Hi All,
I’ve been enjoying The Witch by thinking about the triple irony of the performative power of Latin incantation in the play. First, the Latin is invoked to construct and express an intimate knowledge of the dark arts. In turn, by one’s disclosure of her ability to wield such fragments/aspects/charms of “real” witchcraft, she seemingly certifies herself to the public as powerful, intimidating, diabolical, and fearsome. To contextualize that characterization, we can look again to Scot, whom Middleton has at times “taken over verbatim” according to Corbin and Sedge(15). More specifically, throughout The Discoverie of Witchcraft, Scot mentions the panicky, pervasive paranoia of the public towards witches in their midst, e.g. “the people would be worse willing to accuse [witches] for feare least at their returne home, they worke revenge upon them” (11), and these witches, in their flagrant diabolical certainty, undermine good Christian society because “they denie God, and all religion” (Scot 18). More importantly here, that fear is encoded in the illegibility of their trade to the common English citizen, who more often than not lacked the training in Latin to begin to approach and attempt to understand the secretive workings of the witches (thereby making such citizens dependent upon those in society who were in fact literate in Latin, such as the clergy or the educated royals. How systematically convenient….)
Then, in The Witch, Latin crops up in conspicuous moments, flashing its conspicuous quasi-authority at presumably selective moments requiring some bewitching mystery for the common Jacobean audience member. Hence, in II.ii.11-24, the audience realizes more emotively (for Middleton’s intent) the surprise of Almachildes through his ‘discoverie’ of the inscribed charm. And therein comes some of the humor as the Latin translations accompany the Latin, thereby creating a dramatic dependence of the unlearned audience member upon the text (and Middleton mediated through Almachildes) for its power, its meaning, while also serving as a sort of public initiation into the unlocking of a smidgen of witchcraft’s mystery by decoding its encrypted Latin secrets. And, again, the Middleton is devilishly purloined from Scot, assigning here, too, a layer of ironic verbal/textual humor…. [Tangentially (but interestingly for you, I hope!), this makes me think, too, of Scot’s explanation of the lack of 18th century prophets being a signal of infidelity because “our salvation [already] is contained in the word of god: our faith is already confirmed, and our church established by miracles; so as now to seeke for them, is a pointe of infidelitie” (86).]
Similarly, but with more intention to summon authority through performativity, Hecate in V.ii.18-24 utters her ostensibly sinister invective in Latin. Of course, as aforementioned by Trisha (I think), this grande dame of the darkside is but herself a subservient initiate. Nevertheless, her sustained utterance must’ve been more frightful in a certain regard for Jacobean audience members on account of its ominous incomprehensibility in the devil’s ‘toong’, and therefore its tinge of danger in utterance by the player. Of note, Scot, too, plays with this performative manipulation of audience via a modulation of his proximity to disclosure of secrets/Truth through language. More specifically, in a predominantly English-only passage of Book XII, Ch. 10 (in the sections, fittingly, on “charms”), he refrains from divulging the ingredients for witches’ spells to create “holie water” because such a list of the necessary ingredients “would be too long” (135). Right…. However, in Book XV, Chapter XV (subtitled in English “The making of the holie water”), Scot then offers the prayers in a sustained, incantatory series of Latin paragraphs, which are punctuated by only the most brief and superficial of English instructions, such as “To the water saie also ad followeth” (244-5).
Perhaps, then, the third layer of irony to consider is our retrospective ability to see this bilingual writing in The Witch (and in Scot and in Marlowe, for ex.) as a mere writerly ploy to intensify the emotional enthrallment of audience members, particularly in instances where the writer needs to finagle undeserved authority out of what Penny aptly called “blank ‘types’…with little psychological depth” in scenes of “flimsy” dramatic merit, as Bryan writes? Thus, to put it succinctly, I'm interested in any and all comments tomorrow stemming from our perceptions of characterization and setting in The Witch, especially with regard to the rhetorical use of Latin, and how that might correlate to conventions of the Jacobean theater.
Some fascinating posts so far.
Like Trish, I find myself agreeing with Penny's points about the domestication and integration of the witches (especially Hecate) into the world of Middleton's play.
In contrast to the witches in Macbeth which operate on the periphery and contribute no direct action other than cryptic prophecy, Middleton's witches seem to locate themselves at the nexus of the society and bridge the concerns and ambitions of the various characters from Almachildes to the Duchess. This fixing of position and apparent subservience to the state/nobility suggests that the witchcraft then is something of a trade, the witches being practitioners of a craft who produce a product or service for their patrons.
This construction of a "witch" as a necessary facilitator of the play's action puts the witches at the dead center of the narrative and suggest that all significant action and development must pass through the witch as mediator. However, the witches do not interfere with free will, but simply enable transactions and exchanges of ill will to occur.
Middleton's generous sampling of Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft illustrates precisely why such detailed treatises may have been counterproductive. Rather than debunking the witch, Scot's work serves as the means by which a witch is constructed in popular culture.
Witchcraft in some respects comes across in a weaker flavor than that of Macbeth or King James' Demonologie. While capable of creating love charms and hexes, these witches do not possess power equal to or greater than that of the church (eg. a wedding vow cannot be undone). Fear seems to be inspired more by the eeriness of the unknown Latin, than by the onstage actions of the witches. They are also represented as somewhat humorous, wise to the weakness of human nature. Their powers are not immediate or even innate, but also negotiated with each transaction and requiring time for completion. The charms they produce (as in the case of Almachildes' charm given to Amoretta) can be foiled by normal means -- accidents of nature, rather than the intervention of the supernatural. In general, witches are not so much demonic as they are merely the external representations of ill-nature of the characters who seek them out. Perhaps in a somewhat Freudian way, the witches might be seen as these characters' mechanism of wish fulfillment?
Like Penny, I found much of the play somewhat fraught with textual difficulties. Nevertheless, the way in which the witches’ position in and relationship to society was of particular interest to me. (Forgive me here for bringing in other texts, but my classes are influencing one another at this point in the term!) For instance, the very odd relationship between Hecate and her son Firestone prompted in me an analysis of the possible role of magic in exchange. Lev-Strauss’ thesis, that women are values and signs that must be exchanged in order to maintain social cohesion, is particularly interesting when you think about the incest in the play. By refusing to submit to the rule of exogamy and thereby maintaining her own bizarre commerce with society through magic, Hecate finds yet another level on which to be utterly transgressive. The idea of magic being the good that binds the mini- , meta- economy between witchcraft and the mortal world is a provocative one : what kind of economy is it that operates around the kind of phantasmatic trade that witchcraft is? Furthermore, what is the relationship between fear / social anxiety and this marketplace for invisibility and superstition? Isn’t is the case that this is a self-enclosed economy of the same and isn’t moreover possibly the case that the very notion of magic itself requires such an economy to exist?
Sorry guys! I've been trying to alter my profile by computer seems stuck on the profile of my former student. So, for the time bing, Carolyn is Keisha.
Sorry I'm late.
I'll focus on the witches, because it was there I tried to salvage my interest in this text.
I had hoped to develop some kind of Marxist reading, as, while Hecate's boiling that first potion of unbaptized baby, et al., she speaks of a farmer and a wife and reveals something of a motive for her witchery: "They denied me often flour, barm and milk, goose-grease and tar, when I ne'er hurt their charmings, their brew-locks, nor their batches, nor forspoke any of their breedings."
Much of the scholarship on this play mentions how Middleton took a laundry list of witch-specific acts and ingredients from Discovery of Witchcraft, while leaving behind all of Scot's scepticism. I agree with that, for the most part, but see in the quoted line above a hint of Scot's scepticism. He writes in Chapter IX about melancholie and how it induces some women to "imagine they are witches and by witchcraft can worke wonders, and doo what they list."
Middleton's witches struck me as this: just women, members of the community. They are interested in earthly delights (incubus, succubus) petty conflicts with neighbors, and, in Hecate, the doings of one's son: "You had rather hunt after strange women still than lie with your own mothers."
These witches are so terrestrial -- professionals, as Neil suggests, very much a part of the community. Their is no sense of temptation, nothing threatening about them in my reading.
What I found so engaging about MacBeth was that we couldn't say one way or another if the witches were real (Banquo's shared sighting complicates that matter). They were unreal in all the ways that Middleton's witches are mundane. Were they the ambition in MacBeth's brain, his earthly desires personified? Certainly they weren't mere commodities, as Middleton's players seem: spells you pull off the shelf.
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