Abstract:
Witches, Bewitching Women, and Enticing Voices on the Early Modern English Stage
Coloured variously by classical mythology, traditional folklore, and accounts of contemporary witch trials, the epithets clustered around the idea of the “witch” in early modern plays bring together some ostensibly contradictory characters—from conjuring hags to mesmerizing seductresses.
Among the traits shared by these disparate female figures, however, are their frequent link to music and their use of the voice to conjure, enchant, entice, or delight. Young or old, attractive or repulsive to onlookers, they also hold a disruptive potential within the play worlds, at odds with the social order or with male reason and self-possession.
This presentation, drawing on in-progress work with a book chapter, investigates how the intersections between the multilayered early modern discourses around song, gender, and sexuality play out in relation to both literal and metaphorical witches on stage.
Juxtaposing covens of witches, devils in female form, courtesans and music-making maids, it draws together examples of song from a range of play texts from the first decades of the seventeenth century. It also aims to bring critical perspectives on the spectacle of singing, dancing witches into conversation with previous readings of the siren-like allure of musical women on stage.
In so doing, the discussion seeks to trace shared ground between these characters and epithets, exploring how the represented female bodies and voices—whether through their deformity or their beauty—become connected to (sexual) danger, transgression, and excess.
