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Hear a lutenist play 'The Witches' Dance': 04%20Track%2004.mp3. You will need sound media installed on your PC to play it. This is performed by a solo lutenist (one Lutz Kirchhof), who probably hasn't recognised that the music is supposed to sound as unusual as possible, as in the decription of the music in the masque text itself. He plays it over-sweetly. However, I have heard David Lindley play the piece at an academic conference, where his point was that 17th century English music doesn't sound particularly expressive to us. Once you have heard some Wagner, this is going to seem very timid. Doubtless, a larger group of performers, fully apprised of what they were about, might have managed to make the piece sound stranger.

Unfortunately, no drawings by Inigo Jones for witch costumes in the Masque of Queens survive. The costumes for the aristocratic masquers are very well represented. There are, however, sketches by Jones for witches in the last masque of all, the Thomas Davenant-Inigo Jones collaboration of 1640, Salmacida Spolia. The sketch is given here, along with two of the main masquers in The Masque of Queens. We can imagine the witches in the earlier masque to have had very similar form. They wave bones and snakes. You will notice the quite surprisingly overt sexuality of the masque costumes for the virtuous queens of Jonson's masque, two or three of whom were apparently intended to dance topless. The witch also has her own hideous version of toplessness. This contrast of bodies is something that we can relate to the violent opposition of Sophonisba and Erictho in Marston's play, where Sophonisba is characterised as both desireable and sexually candid. The Amazon queen would have been performed by Donne's patron, The Countess of Bedford.