Witchcraft and Drama: Practice Paper, 2004

During the vacation, or next term, give yourself two hours to attempt two of these questions. Try to conform to exam conditions: you will not have texts in the exam, so monitor how often you have to turn to a text in doing this exercise. That will teach you how well you know the plays. I will mark your papers if you wish, but I do not regard your doing this exercise as part of the required coursework.

As I suggest, each essay should ideally refer to at least THREE plays. Your discussion might give most space to two texts, but it would be good practice if you were able to add brief discussion of a third.

Even in doing this exercise, you should avoid repetition of material, to practice observation of the basic examination rubric about not repeating material.

Can I suggest that, if you consider it likely that you will attempt the extract question on the paper, it would be very good preparation to do question 8, perhaps even as additional revision? Choosing a passage for yourself will be salutary and help you spot likely scenes.

1. ‘In the end, they fall back on sensationalism’ (Purkiss, on the witchcraft plays). How far would you be prepared to defend the plays from this imputation?

2. ‘Witchcraft offered an irresistible prospect of avenging their wrongs, becoming rich and retaining power over their neighbours’ (Scarre, on the motives of witches). How far do you think that the witchcraft plays reflect these, or other, motives?

3. 'Our cattle fall, our wives fall, our daughters fall, and maidservants fall: and we ourselves shall not be able to stand if this beast be suffered to graze amongst us'.(The Witch of Edmonton). Discuss how far the witchcraft plays represent witchcraft accusations and panics as a product of sexual anxieties.

4. ‘Brome and Heywood’s play effectively takes the prosecution’s side’ (Egan). Was it inevitable that witchcraft plays would do this?

5. ‘Sceptical positions are made available and then erased’ (Purkiss). Illustrate and discuss.

6. ‘Without the tribunes of the people, social persecution cannot be organised. Without the people, it cannot be achieved’ (Trevor-Roper). In the light of this comment on the historical process of witchcraft persecutions, discuss the way the plays covered by the course present that same process.

7. ‘(The play) reveals a society living on the margin between prosperity and disaster, and thus vulnerable and open to the conclusion that witchcraft is the cause of each misfortune’ (Corbin and Sedge on The Witch of Edmonton). Do you agree, and what else do the plays seem to you to reveal about the communities they depict?

8. Choose a passage from either The Witch of Edmonton or The Late Lancashire Witches. Your extract should be not less than 50 lines, nor longer than 100 lines. Write a discussion of its dramatic and/or literary interest, and if any aspects of the passage seem to you of interest for the historian of witchcraft, mention them.