King James and the Theatre of Witches PDF Download

Author: Dawn A. Saliba
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781303310584
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 694

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Author: Dawn Adrienne Saliba
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781527575561
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This book presents a cultural analysis of King James I of Englandâ (TM)s evolving perspectives regarding witchcraft and his influence upon the â oewitch playsâ of Renaissance England. Early on during the Stuart monarch's reign in Scotland (1588-1591), James directed a fevered hunt of witches whom he believed were trying to assassinate him, an event that later came to be known as â oeThe North Berwick Affair.â He played a direct role in the interrogations, personally approving and, at times, overseeing the horrific torture of some of the accused. In 1597, the monarch also penned a compendium of witchcraft lore entitled Daemonologie, which acted as a manual for identifying, interrogating and punishing witches. Once the King ascended to the British throne, London-based dramatists endeavored to please their monarch with plays that catered to his interests while at the same time subverting his beliefs in witchcraft lore. The Kingâ (TM)s works and involvement in witchcraft trials are notably referenced, sometimes satirically, in William Shakespeareâ (TM)s Macbeth, Ben Jonsonâ (TM)s Masque of Queenes, Thomas Middletonâ (TM)s The Witch, and Dekker, Rowley and Fordâ (TM)s The Witch of Edmontonâ "all of which respond to the Kingâ (TM)s philosophical engagement with witchlore. Through the analysis of four Jacobean â oewitch-playsâ and an examination of King James's role within the witchcraft debates and his involvement with contemporaneous witch trials, this work shows how the monarchâ (TM)s various publications on witchlore transmuted stage and culture. Taken as a group, these dramas provide a window into the newly emergent humanism of the Renaissance world and its struggle with gender-driven categoriesâ "especially regarding the cultural praxis of accusing, torturing and executing â oewitches.â

Author: William Godwin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781540366795
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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"The reader should bear in mind, that what is put down in this book is but a small part and scantling of the acts of sorcery and witchcraft which have existed in human society. They have been found in all ages and countries. The torrid zone and the frozen north have neither of them escaped from a fruitful harvest of this sort of offspring. In ages of ignorance they have been especially at home ; and the races of men that have left no records behind them to tell almost that they existed, have been most of all rife in deeds of darkness, and those marvelous incidents which especially astonish the spectator, and throw back the infant reason of man into those shades and that obscurity from which it had so recently endeavored to escape. I wind up for the present my literary labors with the production of this book. Nor let any reader imagine that I here put into his hands a mere work of idle recreation. It will be found pregnant with deeper uses. The wildest extravagances of human fancy, the most deplorable perversion of human faculties, and the most horrible distortions of jurisprudence, may occasionally afford us a salutary lesson. I love in the foremost place to contemplate man in all his honors and in all the exaltation of wisdom and virtue ; but it will also be occasionally of service to us to look into his obliquities, and distinctly to remark how great and portentous have been his absurdities and his follies." (William Godwin) The book has been originally published in 1834. This is a professional reproduction

Author: King James The First
Publisher: BEYOND BOOKS HUB
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 87

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The first text presented here, written by James I of England, is a wide-ranging discussion of witchcraft, necromancy, possession, demons, were-wolves, fairies and ghosts, in the form of a Socratic dialogue. The second text is a sensational historical account of Scottish witch persecution.

Author: King James
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781720360247
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Daemonologie-in full Daemonologie, In Forme of a Dialogue, Divided into three Books: By the High and Mighty Prince, James &c.-was written and published in 1597 by King James VI of Scotland (later also James I of England) as a philosophical dissertation on contemporary necromancy and the historical relationships between the various methods of divination used from ancient black magic. This included a study on demonology and the methods demons used to bother troubled men while touching on topics such as werewolves and vampires. It was a political yet theological statement to educate a misinformed populace on the history, practices and implications of sorcery and the reasons for persecuting a witch in a Christian society under the rule of canonical law. This book is believed to be one of the main sources used by William Shakespeare in the production of Macbeth. Shakespeare attributed many quotes and rituals found within the book directly to the Weird Sisters, yet also attributed the Scottish themes and settings referenced from the trials in which King James was involved.

Author: Donald Tyson
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN: 0738729949
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Written by King James I and published in 1597, the original edition of Demonology is widely regarded as one of the most interesting and controversial religious writings in history, yet because it is written in the language of its day, it has been notoriously difficult to understand. Now occult scholar Donald Tyson has modernized and annotated the original text, making this historically important work accessible to contemporary readers. Also deciphered here, for the first time, is the anonymous tract News from Scotland, an account of the North Berwick witch trials over which King James presided. Tyson examines King James' obsession with witches and their alleged attempts on his life, and offers a knowledgeable and sympathetic look at the details of magick and witchcraft in the Jacobean period. Demonology features historical woodcut illustrations and includes the original old English texts in their entirety. This reference work is the key to an essential source text on seventeenth-century witchcraft and the Scottish witch trials

Author: Richard Brome
Publisher: Theatre Arts Books
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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In this ribald comedy, first performed at The Globe in 1634, everything is going wrong at a wedding, and everyone in attendance is eager to believe a local coven is to blame.

Author: John Ford
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408144247
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
It is a historical phenomenon that while thousands of women were being burnt as witches in early modern Europe, the English - although there were a few celebrated trials and executions, one of which the play dramatises - were not widely infected by the witch-craze. The stage seems to have provided an outlet for anxieties about witchcraft, as well as an opportunity for public analysis. The Witch of Edmonton (1621) manifests this fundamentally reasonable attitude, with Dekker insisting on justice for the poor and oppressed, Ford providing psychological character studies, and Rowley the clowning. The village community of Edmonton feels threatened by two misfits, Old Mother Sawyer, who has turned to the devil to aid her against her unfeeling neighbours, and Frank, who refuses to marry the woman of his father's choice and ends up murdering her. This edition shows how the play generates sympathy for both and how contemporaries would have responded to its presentation of village life and witchcraft.

Author: Garry Wills
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195102908
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
This book reinterprets Macbeth by returning it to the context of its own time, recreating the theological and political crises of Shakespeare's era.

Author: Robert Burns
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 25

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Book Description
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Tam O'Shanter" by Robert Burns. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.