428. Weird Sisters: Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Witchcraft
How Macbeth reflects the anxieties and explanations surrounding witchcraft and witch-hunting in early modern Europe.
Themes:
• P.C. Almond, England’s First Demonologist: Reginald Scot and ‘The Discoverie of Witchcraft’ (London: 2011).
• S. Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: 1999).
• P. Elmer, Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England (Oxford: 2016).
• B.P. Levack, The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America (Oxford: 2013).
• A. Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (London: 1970).
• C.-R. Millar, Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions in Early Modern England (London: 2017).
• J. Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England 1550–1750 (London: 1996).
• K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (London: 1971).
• L. Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religon in Early Modern Europe (London: 1994).
• G. Wills, Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare’s Macbeth (New York: 1995).
Episodes 416 -: Renaissance and Reformation in Britain
Comments
Episode
It was an excellent episode and a good bibliography. Euan Cameron's book "Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250-1750" (Oxford, 2010) is also very interesting and might supplement what you have done. His is still the best book on the European Reformation.
Which philosopher will next recieve a mini series
Wonderful Professor, these 5 last episodes on Shakespeare were excellent, which philosopher do you plan on devoting 3+ episodes next, I presume Franicsco Suarez of the School of Salamanca ?
Once we reach 1600-1800 we'll start covering major figures in multiple episodes, like how you covered Ockham, Scotus, Aquinas extensively, I expect the same for Descartes (who might himself reach 10+ like how you covered Augustine, Plato and Aristotle).
In reply to Which philosopher will next recieve a mini series by dukeofethereal
Miniseries
Yes I think that's right - maybe not a series on just one person, but there will be a tightly grouped series on the Iberian scholastics. Coming up sooner we have a kind of mini-series on Renaissance British science, with Dee, Harriot, Gilbert etc in focus. I am increasingly finding that having thematically grouped episodes like this is helpful for me (and hopefully the audience) to tackle one biggish topic at a time.
Weird sisters
"But I fear that no weapon wrought along by man's hand would have any effect on him. I dared not wait to see him return, for I feared to see those weird sisters."
"Dracula" chapter 4
Scotland
I was a bit surprised Scotland didn't come up very much (at all?) in this episode. You've covered it for other parts of this series. As I understand it, while the vast majority of witch hunts happened in the HRE, the vast majority of those that occurred outside the HRE happened in Scotland or Denmark.
Am i mistaken on this? Was it just too unrelated to Shakespeare or to the other theorists covered?
In reply to Scotland by Alexander Johnson
Witches in Scotland
No you're right, I actually have some notes on that but they were purely historical and I didn't really find a way to shoehorn it in (though perhaps I could have done that when contrasting England to the Continent - I will actually do that for the book, thanks). Apparently there were about 4000 trials with five waves of panic, the first starting in 1590. There is also a book on the topic which at least made it into a note for the book version:
J. Goodare, L. Martin and J. Miller (eds), Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland (Houndsmills: 2008).
Add new comment