Stanford Drama

Shakespeare's plays are populated with women accused of or associated with witchcraft: Joan of Arc, the treasonous witch; the would-be sorceress in 2 Henry VI whose witchcraft fails; the midwife in The Winter's Tale; the young lovers bewitched in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry V, and Othello; Sycorax and Prospero; and the women whose wisdom and seductive beauty leave them accused as witches in The Winter's Tale and Pericles. Early modern witchcraft belief incorporated all of these images into the definition of the witch: she was the village beggar, disorderly and cursing; she was the woman outside of patriarchal structure, unmarried, widowed, or sexually active; she was the healer or midwife, in contest with the emerging medical profession. Belief in witchcraft, and the perception of the witch as the female embodiment of disorder and evil was pervasive in Shakespeare's England.

This dissertation explores the relationships between the history of witchcraft and early modern constructions of gender, sexuality and power. The study analyzes the representation of these relationships in Shakespeare's plays. I argue that the associations among witchcraft, specacle and performance affiliates the antitheatrical movement, which accused the theatre of being a form of witchcraft, with ideological constructions of perverted femininity. Shakespearean texts reappropriate witchcraft as a complex metaphor for artistic creation, whcih can be read both as a response to antitheatricality and as part of a larger cultural narrative that linked femininity and birthing to art. Chapter titles: One: Introduction: Tricks of the Trade; Two: "Aught that Man may Question": Discourses of the Demonic; Three: Nursing Nothing: Female Sexuality and Maternal Evil; Four: Telling Tales: Narrative Witchcraft and Othello; Five: "The little O" and other Places of Conjuring; Six: Preaching, Playing, and the Uses of Witchcraft.