An analysis of Part 1 of our series on Witches, with Brian Weiser. Brian Weiser is Professor of History at MSU-Denver, where he teaches world history, European history, and upper-level courses such as Renaissance and Reformation, Tudor and Stuart England, and Magic in Britain. He has published a book, Charles II and the Politics of Access, and several articles on topics such as representations of and to Charles II, shaming rituals in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, and the military revolution’s effects upon honor and absolutism. His current project is: “The Playwright, the Horsegelder and the Vicar’s Wife: Shame and Shaming in Elizabethan England." His interest in Brome and Heywood’s The Late Lancashire Witches derives partly from teaching a course on Magic in early modern Britain, and partly because the play features a skimmington, a shaming ritual designed to humiliate husbands who were beaten by their wives. For further reading: Richard Brome’s plays, including The Late Lancashire Witches, can be found in both the original and modernized form at Richard Brome Online https://www.dhi.ac.uk/brome/ . The site also has extensive notes and scholarly interpretations. For more on Witchcraft in early modern Europe and England: Clark, Stuart. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Reprint. Oxford Univ. Press, 2005. Elmer, Peter. Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England. Oxford University Press, 2016. Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. Longman, 1993. Millar, Charlotte-Rose. Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions in Early Modern England. Routledge Research in Early Modern History. Routledge, 2018. Sharpe, J. A. Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Sharpe, J. A. The Bewitching of Anne Gunter: A Horrible and True Story of Deception, Witchcraft, Murder, and the King of England. Routledge, 2000. For more on the Late Lancashire Witches Berry, Herbert. “The Globe Bewitched and ‘El Hombre Fiel’.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 1 (January 1984): 211–30. Coffin, Charlotte A. “Theatre and/as Witchcraft: A Reading of The Late Lancashire Witches (1634).” Early Theatre 16, no. 2 (2014). https://doi.org/10.12745/et.16.2.5. Findlay, Alison. “Sexual and Spiritual Politics in the Events of 1633-34 and the Late Lancashire Witches.” In The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories. Manchester University Press, 2002. Hirsch, Brett D. “Hornpipes and Disordered Dancing in The Late Lancashire Witches: A Reel Crux?” Early Theatre 16, no. 1 (2013). https://doi.org/10.12745/et.16.1.8. Pearson, Meg. “The Late Lancashire Witches: The Girls Next Door.” Preternatural 3, no. 1 (2014): 147–67. Poole, Robert, ed. The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories. Manchester University Press, 2010.
