has given to his Hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist with mirth. But in a lesser degree, the Witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power too is, in some measure, over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf o'er life.

THE WITCH OF EDMONTON.

A TRAGI-COMEDY

[PUBLISHED 1658: FIRST PERFORMED PROBABLY ABOUT 1622]. BY WILLIAM ROWLEY, THOMAS DECKER, JOHN FORD, &c.

MOTHER SAWYER (before she turns Witch) alone.

Saw. And why on me? why should the envious world
Throw all their scandalous malice upon me?
'Cause I am poor, deform'd, and ignorant,
And like a bow buckled and bent together
By some more strong in mischiefs than myself;
Must I for that be made a common sink
For all the filth and rubbish of men's tongues
To fall and run into? Some call me Witch
And being ignorant, of myself, they go
About to teach me how to be one urging

That my bad tongue (by their bad usage made so)
Forespeaks their cattle, doth bewitch their corn,
Themselves, their servants, and their babes at nurse:
This they enforce upon me; and in part

Make me to credit it.1

BANKS, a Farmer, enters.

Banks. Out, out upon thee, Witch.

Saw. Dost call me Witch?

Banks. I do, Witch, I do:

And worse I would, knew I a name more hateful.

What makest thou upon my ground?

Saw. Gather a few rotten sticks to warm me.

Banks. Down with them when I bid thee, quickly;

I'll make thy bones rattle in thy skin else.

Saw. You won't? churl, cut-throat, miser: there they be.

Would they stuck cross thy throat, thy bowels, thy maw, thy midriff

Banks. Say'st thou me so? Hag, out of my ground.

This Soliloquy anticipates all that Addison has said in the conclusion of the

117th Spectator.

VOL. IV.-10

Saw. Dost strike me, slave, curmudgeon? Now thy bones aches,

thy joints cramps,

And convulsions stretch and crack thy sinews.

Banks. Cursing, thou hag? take that, and that.

Saw. Strike, do: and wither'd may that hand and arm
Whose blows have lam'd me, drop from the rotten trunk.
Abuse me! beat me! call me hag and witch!

What is the name, where, and by what art learn'd?
What spells, or charms, or invocations,

May the thing call'd Familiar be purchased?1

-I am shunn'd

And hated like a sickness: made a scorn

To all degrees and sexes. I have heard old beldams
Talk of Familiars in the shape of mice,

Rats, ferrets, weasels, and I wot not what,

That have appear'd; and suck'd, some say, their blood.
But by what means they came acquainted with them,
I'm now ignorant. Would some power good or bad,
Instruct me which way I might be reveng'd

Upon this churl, I'd go out of myself,
And give this fury leave to dwell within
This ruin'd cottage, ready to fall with age:
Abjure all goodness, be at hate with prayer,
And study curses, imprecations,

Blasphemous speeches, oaths, detested oaths,
Or any thing that's ill; so I might work

Revenge upon this miser, this black cur,

That barks, and bites, and sucks the very blood

Of me, and of my credit. "Tis all one

To be a witch as to be counted one.

[Exit.

[Act ii., Sc. 1.2]

She gets a Familiar which serves her in the likeness of a Black

Dog.

MOTHER SAWYER.

Saw. I am dried up

Familiar.

With cursing and with madness; and have yet

No blood to moisten these sweet lips of thine.

Stand on thy hind-legs up. Kiss me, my Tommy;
And rub away some wrinkles on my brow,

By making my old ribs to shrug for joy

Of thy fine tricks. What hast thou done? Let's tickle.
Hast thou struck the horse lame as I bid thee?

1[Two and a quarter pages omitted.]

2[Mermaid Series. Decker, ed. Rhys.]

Famil. Yes, and nipt the sucking child.

Saw. Ho, ho, my dainty,

My little pearl. No lady loves her hound,

Monkey, or parakeet, as I do thee.

Famil. The maid has been churning butter nine hours, but it

shall not come.

Saw. Let'm eat cheese and choak.

Famil. I had rare sport

Among the clowns in the morrice.

Saw. I could dance

Out of my skin to hear thee.

But, my curl-pate,

That jade, that foul-tongued--Nan Ratcliff,

Who, for a little soap lick'd by my sow,

Struck, and had almost lamed it: did not I charge thee
To pinch that quean to the heart?

*

[Act iv., Sc. 1.]

Her Familiar absents himself: she invokes him.

Saw.
-Not see me in three days?
I'm lost without my Tomalin; prithee come;
Revenge to me is sweeter far than life:
Thou art my raven, on whose coal-black wings
Revenge comes flying to me: Oh, my best love,
I am on fire (even in the midst of ice)

Raking my blood up, till my shrunk knees feel

Thy curl'd head leaning on them. Come then, my darling.
If in the air thou hover'st, fall upon me

In some dark cloud; and, as I oft have seen

Dragons and serpents in the elements,

Appear thou now so to me. Art thou i' the sea ?

Muster up all the monsters from the deep,

And be the ugliest of them: so that my bulch

Shew but his swarth cheek to me, let earth cleave,

And break from hell, I care not could I run
Like a swift powder-mine beneath the world,
Up would I blow it, all to find out thee,

Though I lay ruin'd in it.-Not yet come?

I must then fall to my old prayer: sanctibiceter nomen tuum.1

He comes in White.

Saw. Why dost thou thus appear to me in white,

As if thou wert the ghost of my dear love?

Famil. I am dogged, list not to tell thee, yet to torment thee, My whiteness puts thee in mind of thy winding-sheet.

[Nine lines omitted.]

Saw. Am I near death?

Famil. Be blasted with the news.

Whiteness is day's footboy, a fore-runner to light, which shows thy old rivel'd face: villanies are stript naked, the witch must be beaten out of her cockpit.

Saw. Why to mine eyes art thou a flag of truce?
I am at peace with none; 'tis the black colour,
Or none, which I fight under: I do not like
Thy puritan-paleness.-

[Act v., Sc. 1.]

Mother Sawyer differs from the hags of Middleton or Shakspeare. She is the plain traditional old woman Witch of our ancestors; poor, deformed, and ignorant; the terror of villages, herself amenable to a justice. That should be a hardy sheriff, with the power of the county at his heels, that would lay hands on the Weird Sisters. They are of another jurisdiction. But upon the common and received opinion the author (or authors) have engrafted strong fancy. There is something frightfully earnest in her invocations to the Familiar.

THE ATHEIST'S TRAGEDY; OR, THE HONEST MAN'S REVENGE [PUBLISHED 1611]. BY CYRIL TOURNEUR [1575?-1626]

D'Amville (the Atheist), with the aid of his wicked instrument, Borachio, murders his Brother, Montferrers, for his Estate. After the deed is done, Borachio and he talk together of the circumstances which attend the murder.

D'Am. Here's a sweet comedy, begins with O dolentis, and concludes with ha, ha, he.

Bor. Ha, ha, he.

D'Am. O my echo! I could stand reverberating this sweet musical air of joy, till I had perished my sound lungs with violent laughter. Lovely night-raven, thou hast seized a car

case?

Bor. Put him out on's pain. I lay so fitly underneath the bank from whence he fell, that ere his faultering tongue could utter double O, I knocked out his brains with this fair ruby; and had another stone just of this form and bigness ready, that I laid in the broken scull upon the ground for his pillow, against the which they thought he fell and perished. D'Am. Upon this ground I'll build my manor house, And this shall be chiefest corner stone.

Bor. This crown'd the most judicious murder, that

The brain of man was e'er delivered of.

D'Am. Aye, mark the plot. Not any circumstance

That stood within the reach of the design,
Of persons, dispositions, matter, time,
Or place, but by this brain of mine was made
An instrumental help; yet nothing from
The induction to the accomplishment
Or done o' purpose, but by accident.

seem'd forced,

[Here they reckon up the several circumstances.1 Bor. Then darkness did

Protect the execution of the work

Both from prevention and discovery.

D'Am. Here was a murder bravely carried through
The eye of observation, unobserved.

Bor. And those that saw the passage of it, made
The instruments; yet knew not what they did.
D'Am. That power of rule, philosophers ascribe
To him they call the Supreme of the Stars,
Making their influences governors

Of sublunary creatures, when theirselves
Are senseless of their operations.

[Thunder and Lightning.

What! dost start at thunder? Credit my belief, 'tis a mere effect of nature, an exhalation hot and dry, involved within a watry vapour in the middle region of the air, whose coldness congealing that thick moisture to a cloud, the angry exhalation shut within a prison of contrary quality, strives to be free; and with the violent eruption through the grossness of that cloud, makes this noise we hear.

Bor. "Tis a fearful noise.

D'Am. "Tis a brave noise; and, methinks, graces our accomplished project, as a peal of ordnance does a triumph. It speaks encouragement. Now nature shows thee how it favoured our performance: to forbear this noise when we set forth, because it should not terrify my brother's going home, which would have dashed our purpose: to forbear this lightning in our passage, lest it should ha' warned him of the pitfall. Then propitious nature winked at our proceedings; now, it doth express how that forbearance favour'd our

success.

Drowned Soldier.

-walking upon the fatal shore, Among the slaughter'd bodies of their men, Which the full-stomach'd sea had cast upon

[Act ii., Sc. 4.2]

1

1 [Twenty-one lines omitted.]

[Ed. Churton Collins, 1878.]

"["Next day" omitted.]