This paper examines Shakespeare's Macbeth (1606), and The Late Lancashire Witches (1634) by Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome, and considers in detail the witch scenes in both plays and their stage directions during their entrances and exits. The witches in the Jacobean Macbeth of the First Folio, do not explicitly fly in the stage directions. However, they do in the Restoration Macbeth, namely in Davenant's second Quarto (1674). The question to be raised here is: what evidence is there in the pre-Restoration Macbeth that the witches flew? In order to explore this, we must consider what performance spaces were used for Macbeth in the Jacobean period. Shakespeare's Macbeth, and Heywood and Brome's The Late Lancashire Witches form an interesting comparison since they were both revised by other writers. The Late Lancashire Witches has not received as much scholarly attention as the other witch plays discussed here. Therefore, as a comparative study, this paper will also discuss the joint authorship of Heywood and Brome in The Late Lancashire Witches and the stage directions of the witch scenes. Although it seems that the witches did not fly in Heywood's and Brome's version, there is evidence that the stage directions called for flight in The Lancashire Witches (1681), Thomas Shadwell's later version. A further illuminating comparison between these plays is that the creatures we are considering here are sinister figures in Macbeth but comic figures in The Lancashire Witches. The audience can see that the three Weird Sisters enter the stage and then vanish into the air, but do not see them fly.

Abstract:This study is concerned with the historical and theatrical aspects of Middleton's The Witch. Among the questions it will address are which sources Middleton drew on for this play, and to what extent his witches differ from those in Shakespeare's Macbeth. This chapter (paper) also considers the question of whether the treatment of witchcraft in Middleton's The Witch belongs to the English or the Continental tradition. While the historical circumstances of witchcraft ideas are important for an understanding of this play, this paper will demonstrate that questions of genre and visual spectacle are equally important; especially it will argue that the play's comedy and its visual aspects are mutually dependent. In raising the issue of why the play is categorized as tragicomedy, I examine how comedy and technology come together in this play. Finally, this study explores how the play would have worked on stage, and especially how the witchcraft scenes would have been staged to create a theatrical spectacle: what props, or other staging devices were needed, and how these were adapted during the Renaissance period. The question is also raised here as to when the machinery for staging flying witches came into existence, and whether the stage directions of the supernatural scenes in The Witch and some of Shakespeare's later plays, Cymbeline and The Tempest, were originally written by the actual authors or scrivener. This paper also examines differences in stage directions for supernatural characters between early modern and contemporary editions of the above plays.

Abstract This study is principally concerned with the staging of Aristophanes’ Peace. John Dee (1527-1609) was the first person to design a clever stage-effect for Greek drama, Aristophanes’ Peace, and made a giant beetle that could move from the air down to the stage. The nature and status of stage directions in this play will also be investigated, paying particular attention to the status of stage directions in printed text, and whether these stage directions were originally written by the playwright himself or were revised or supplied by editors, scriveners or members of the theatre companies. The paper will also evaluate how the technology of the Elizabethan playhouse facilitated the appearance of dung-beetle on stage.   There was a great demand in the Elizabethan era for plays about spectacular tricks. People at that time were delighted in the dexterity of the supernatural mysteriousness of the magician and witches, and moreover there was a popular appetite for spectacles within such a play. One of the most widespread themes in legend and Elizabethan stage is the flying of supernatural entities. Dragons and dung-beetles are physically manifested differently on Elizabethan stage compared to Medieval and Jacobean stages. Flying of dragons and beetles had a remarkable fiery effect in theatre to create a new genre of spectacle in presenting princely power and martial values to the audience. The special effect of John Dee’s flying scarab for a Cambridge performance of Aristophanes’ Peace also prompted ‘great wondering and many vain reports spread abroad of the means how that was effected’ (Jefferies, 2011). In Aristophanes’ Peace, Trygaeus rides on the back of a giant dung beetle to the heaven in order to arrange peace for the Greeks. The flight scene offers an element of slapstick comedy to the play and makes a comical history out of the flight of the giant beetle. John Dee’s stage directions in Aristophanes’ Peace are very elaborate and clear which help the reader imagine how the play was staged (Hall & Wrigley, 2007). The findings of this study would be beneficial for the researchers, the students of English department and theatre companies.

Abstract:In early modern England cunning men and women (often older people on the fringes of society) became easy targets for gossip within rural communities. I will examine some figures of the cunning woman in this period and show how they appear in different senses: the cunning woman as a healer, nurturer, fortune-teller and domestic manager. Mother Sawyer, in The Witch of Edmonton by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford (1621), complains of the community of Edmonton that she has been convicted because she is 'poor, deform'd, and ignorant' (II.i.3).1 Sawyer has been abused because she is old and ugly and does not have any means by which to make her living. She is physically portrayed as a contemporary English witch. However Sawyer is not a witch from the beginning of the play, and not presented as one until her community accuse her of witchcraft. After she realizes that there is nothing left to lose, she makes a pact with the devil and thus her identity changes from an old woman into a real witch. In John Lyly's Mother Bombie (1594), Bombie is a 'white witch' or 'cunning woman' whose mysterious power is used to help people, not to harm. In Thomas Heywood's The Wise Woman of Hogsdon (1604), the Wise Woman pretends to be a cunning woman and skilled in fortune-telling, palmistry and curing diseases. The three protagonists in the mentioned plays are drawn from English witch-lore, and they live in the suburbs and resort to witchcraft in order to make their living. Mother Sawyer, a traditional English witch, is portrayed as hag-like whereas Mother Bombie and the Wise Woman are English local cunning women. The witches do not fly and stage directions do not call for flight in the witch scenes; their feet remain firmly on the ground in all scenes. Cunning women are not the same as witches: they do not have a familiar, they tell fortunes and cure diseases, are benevolent, they do not hold covens on the Sabbath, do not make pacts with the devil in return for rewards and they do not act maleficium. The chronological approach taken here is used in order to determine the dramatic development of the witches and cunning women in two theatrical modes-the tragic (The Witch of Edmonton) and the comic (Mother Bombie, and The Wise Woman of Hogsdon).

Haggard’s Ayesha is the continuation of the Victorian dream novel She. H. Rider Haggard's She, subtitled A History of Adventure, is figured to be among top rated books at any point distributed: it had sold exactly 83 million duplicates by 1965. Ayesha (really articulated 'Assha'), subtitled The Return of She, who takes after She in the book, is an amazing and puzzling white sovereign who administers the African Amahagger individuals. Ayesha has enchantment controls and is undying, which makes She a dream experience book. Despite the fact that She and Ayesha were distributed almost twenty years separated, H. Rider Haggard stated that Ayesha was a decision to a two-section book, not a continuation. There is likewise a "prequel," She and Allan (1921). In the two books, an imaginary manager shows an original copy portrayal by Ludwig Horace Holly. In Haggard’s She, considering that some parts of the novel are so comfortable, readers might feel compelled into thinking that they are going through Haggard’s tour in Africa. Fortunately, in any event, when the plot eases back to a nearly gastropod pace, the way Haggard's depicts the African culture and scene conveys the reader along. Ayesha, known as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, first showed up in sequential structure from 1896 to 1897 in the novel She. Ayesha is one of the marvelous, kick-ass lady characters in Victorian writing who represents the misogynist construction of femininity and embodies the femme fatale. This paper is principally concerned about the representation of feminine power and the representation of womanhood in Haggard’s Ayesha. Some questions will be investigated here. Can one consider Ayesha as a “conclusion” or a “sequel” to She since the whole novel replicates the same thematic and structural maneuvers of She? Does Haggard revive Ayesha, the “new woman”, in The Return of She respond to the threat to traditional gender roles? The findings of this study will be beneficial for the researchers, and all the undergraduate and postgraduate students of English department.