The Late Lancashire Witches is a Caroline-era stage play and written by Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome, published in 1634. The play is a topical melodrama on the subject of the witchcraft controversy that arose in Lancashire in 1633.Laird H. Barber Jr., "The Late Lancashire Witches," Notes & Queries 9 (1962), p. 29.
Performance The play was performed by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre. It was a popular success; it ran for three consecutive days in August 1634, at a time when plays were normally changed daily in a repertory system.
Date and collaboration It was once thought that Brome revised an old play by Heywood to make it pertinent to the situation in the early 1630s, generating a work that is roughly 90 per cent Heywood and 10 per cent Brome.Clarence E. Andrews, "The Authorship of The Late Lancashire Witches," Modern Language Notes 28 (1913), p. 163. Modern scholarship argues that the dramatists' extensive use of court documents shows that Heywood and Brome wrote a new play in 1633–34 to capitalise on a current public affair, producing a work that is much closer to an equal collaboration.Robert Grant Martin, "Is The Late Lancashire Witches a Revision?", Modern Philology 13 (1915), p. 253.Heather Hirshfield, "Collaborating across Generations: Thomas Heywood, Richard Brome, and the Production of The Late Lancashire Witches," Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30.2 (2000), p. 340. The 1634 quarto was printed by Thomas Harper for the bookseller Benjamin Fisher, with a Prologue addressed by Heywood to the Earl of Dorset.
Genre The Late Lancashire Witches belongs to a subgenre of English Renaissance drama that exploited public interest in the scandalous subject of witchcraft. The most famous of these plays is Shakespeare's Macbeth (c. 1603–6), though Middleton's The Witch (c. 1609–16) and The Witch of Edmonton (1621) by Thomas Dekker, John Ford, and William Rowley, are other notable examples.
The 1633–34 prosecution was the sequel to a larger trial of the Pendle witches in 1612, the major affair of its kind in English history, which resulted in nine people from the Pendle Hill area of Lancashire being hanged at Lancaster Moor. The second episode was unresolved when the two playwrights wrote their play; the dramatists were working so close to events that they had no firm conclusion – the play's Epilogue assumes the guilt of the four women who were the prime suspects but admits that "the ripeness yet of time / Has not reveal'd" the final outcome.Alison Findlay, "Sexual and spiritual politics in the events of 1633–34 and The Late Lancashire Witches," in: The Lancashire Witches: Histories and Stories, edited by Robert Poole; Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2002; pp. 146–65. (In fact, Edmund Robinson, the ten-year-old boy who was the prosecutors' chief witness, later admitted subornation of perjury; King Charles I pardoned all seventeen people convicted.) The Lord Chamberlain of that time, Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, may have prompted the creation of the play for political reasons.Andrew Gurr, The Shakespeare Company, 1594–1642, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004; p. 155.
Plot The play depicts an area of Lancashire within riding distance of Lancaster. Historically, this would be Pendle Hill. The action switches freely from being outdoor, or in the house of Master Generous, the house of the Seely family, the home where Mall Spencer works as a maid, at a mill, or in a barn.
There is a Prologue, which uses a conventional apology for not having a better subject, referring the audience to the ‘witches the fat jailor brought to town’. These convicted witches were in the Fleet Prison, awaiting a decision from the Privy Council as to whether the executions (they and others had been found guilty in court in Lancaster) should go ahead. The ‘fat jailer’ might have been Thomas Covell, in charge of the prison at Lancaster Castle.
ACT 1, scene I. Three gentlemen, Arthur, Shakestone and Bantam have had their hunting disrupted by inexplicable events. To them enters Whetstone, nephew of Mistress Generous, and presumptive heir to Master Generous. Whetstone has a ‘Cratyltic’ name, in reference to an adage that no whetstone is needed to put an edge on a liar’s tongue. Socially insecure (he was the illegitimate son of Mistress Generous’ sister), Whetstone is scorned by the other men, but they have all agreed to dine at Master Generous’ house. Master Generous himself enters, to invite them in. The conversation shifts to the strange inversion of all authority in the local Seely household.
Act I scene ii. Doughty is trying to reason with Old Seely about his abject submission to the will of his son Gregory. This is then demonstrated in the dialogue, with the servant of the household, Lawrence, coming in to command both his social superiors. Seely’s wife Joan is also revealed to be subjugated by her daughter Winny, then both of the women to the maidservant Parnell. Lawrence and Parnell speak in Brome’s version of the Lancashire dialect (simplified in the Egan text). Doughty comments incredulously throughout, and deduces: “Sure all the witches in the country [we would use ‘county’ here] have their hands in this home-spun medley”. Lawrence and Parnell agree to marry and take over as masters, with the Seely family reduced to lodgers.
ACT 2 scene i This scene introduces the sisterhood of witches who have gleefully caused all the disruption seen in Act 1. An extraordinary song in which the witches offer their blood to feed their familiars is sung, and future mischief planned.
Act 2 Scene ii. Inside the Generous household, Generous asks the three gentlemen to be forbearing about Whetstone’s folly. Arthur flatters Generous, the men attend to various legal documents together, at last the three gentleman and Whetstone leave to go hare coursing again. Left on his own, Generous asks his servant Robin, who has entered the scene, to call his Mistress. Robin explains that he cannot, that she is out of the house, alone, on horseback. Though he is disconcerted, Generous makes a conscious effort not to become a suspicious husband, but tells Robin to refuse to let Mistress Generous have a horse next time she demands one. The next entry is a soldier, begging his way home: his dialogue with Generous is interrupted by Generous’ miller, who is leaving his employment because of nocturnal assaults on his sleep by large cats. The soldier says he used to be a miller, and he takes the job instead.
Act 2 iii is a short scene dramatizing the boy who originally spun this whole story of witches. The boy finds two stray greyhounds, as he thinks.
Act 2 iv shows the gentlemen coursing again, with their hunting disrupted this time by a quarrel largely triggered by Bantam (the name connotes a small fighting cock). Bantam flatly calls Whetstone a bastard.
Act 2 v. The boy finds that the greyhounds just will not hunt. As he whips them with a switch, the dogs metamorphose into Goody Dickieson and a devil boy. They abduct the boy together.
Act 2 vi. Robin, sent to Lancaster to buy wine by Generous in the second scene, is seen with his lover, Mall Spencer, whose magical powers are demonstrated. She swaps his grey horse to a long backed black horse, saying that they can both ride to London and back, and get wine from no less than the Mitre Tavern itself (the play has a lot of ‘product placement’).
ACT 3 scene i. Old Seely and Joan are working in the kitchen like servants, preparing the wedding feast for their own servants Lawrence and Parnell, who are being married at the church by Parson Knitknot. The whole party from the church enter joyously, though the wedding bells have been ringing an alarm, rather than a proper peal. Like the bells, the wedding feast is then disrupted by the familiar spirits. The bridal cake turns to bran, and all the cooked meat in the elaborate feast is supernaturally switched for inedible or satirical things (dollops of cow shit, ram’s horns, etc.), finally live birds fly out of the wedding pie (kittens were also used on stage in 1634). The wedding guests nearly panic, but rally to stay in the house, and cold meat is found to make some kind of collation. The charm that he held the Seely family lifts temporarily. They aim to make a merry afternoon, with the encouraging presence of Mall Spencer, merely seen as a merry wench.
Act 3, ii. Generous and Robin are in dialogue about the extraordinary quality of the wine Robin has purchased for his master. Robin affirms he got it from the Mitre Tavern itself, but Generous is incredulous. Robin even produces a valuable document a worker at the Mitre had found, dropped by Generous. But Generous just rationalises this away, and leaves the scene. Mistress Generous enters, and demands a horse: Robin refuses, but with a magical bridle she transforms him into a mount to carry her to the meeting of the sisterhood. Act 3 iii. Back at the wedding party, dialogue reveals that Doughty, an older man, is now enamoured of Mall Spencer. Doughty is seen dancing with Mall, during which her nose is (apparently) briefly transformed into a crone’s hooked nose. Lawrence the bridegroom wants Parnell to perform some unspecified sexual act with him ahead of bedtime. Mall gives to Lawrence an enchanted ‘point’, a lace to retain the flap of his codpiece – it will render him impotent, but not knowing this, he fastens it in place. The music for the dancing turns into a cacophony of different tunes, and then the instruments are supernaturally silenced. But it is remembered that bagpipes resist magic (an effect used in the preposterous Ken Russell horror film, ‘The Lair of the White Worm’). The piper is invited in, everyone performs a drunken reel, but finally Mall and the piper vanish. Doughty now decides that the whole day has been subjected to witchcraft. The bride and groom go to bed as the act ends.
ACT 4 scene i starts at the barn where Mistress Generous dismounts from Robin and enters to join the sisterhood, who will feast on the wedding feast spirited away in the previous act. Robin peers in, and comments on what he sees (it is of interest that he reports on just a female company assembled, and makes no testimony to the devil being present). As was historically alleged by the boy Edmund Robinson, the food descends from above when the witches tug on ropes. The boy abducted by Good Dickieson is present, his testimony is that the food is vitiated, and has, as he puts it, ‘neither salt or savour’. He escapes, and the witches find that they cannot pursue him without being witnessed, so they hastily break up their party. When Mistress Generous thinks to ride Robin back to her house, he snatches the magic bridle and rides her instead.
4 ii is the serious part of the play. Generous enters, thoughtful about his wife: her bed has not been slept in. He calls for Robin to check on his horses, and asks for the stable key. Robin knows that he will find an unknown mare in the stable (Mistress Generous transformed into a horse by the magic bridle). Generous re-enters, furious with Robin for giving free stabling to another person’s horse. Robin persuades his master that this horse is his own, and that he has stabled this mare for twenty years and more: Generous should just go the stable and take off the bridle. Generous returns, stupefied by what has happened in the stable. Mistress Generous, completely incriminated, confesses to witchcraft, and to having made a full pact with the devil. Generous, the sceptic, is confuted, and now witchcraft lore fills his mind as truth: he can now imagine that he has often slept with a succubus, left by his side while she has been out with her fellow witches. Mistress Generous expresses great contrition, and either weeps or seems to weep (a pacted witch was not supposed to be able to do this), and her husband decides to believe in her penitence, and tells Robin to keep quiet about what he has seen.