Thomas Pettitt

The Folk-Play in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

TO whatever source one seeks to trace the English folk-play, the absence of early texts and records is a serious obstacle. The earliest text of a folk-play performance is from 17801, the earliest chapbook text from the middle decades of the eighteenth century,2 while the earliest reliable description of a performance resembling the modern folk-play takes us back only as far as 1737.3 Beyond this there is a baffling silence. The denunciations of various types of folk-revelry by medieval ecclestiastics and sixteenth-century Puritans contain nothing similar to the modern folk-play or any plausible progenitor of it,4 and early students of popular antiquities such as John Aubrey and Henry Bourne have likewise nothing useful to offer.5 This silence is broken only by occasional hints and reminiscences in literary sources. There are echoes of folk-play motifs and characteristics in early stageplays like Mucedorus, The Taming of the Shrew, and perhaps A Midsummer Nights Dream, in some masques, and in interludes.6 These parallels are generally of a limited and sporadic nature, however, making it difficult to determine the direction of the borrowing. More interesting is the fifteenthcentury morality, Mankind, in which five or six substantial parallels are concentrated in a single sequence, making it likely that the author had as a model some kind of performance resembling the folk-play as we know it today.7 An even better example of the same kind, which seems hithertoe to have passed unnoticed, occurs in Christopher Marlowes Doctor Faustus.8 The parallels here are of such a kind as to make it virtually certain that something closely resembling the modern folk-play in its central significant action was in existence in England by the end of the sixteenth century. In Act IV of the 1616 text of the play, Faustus, demonstrating his magical powers to the German Emperor, is twitted by the courtier Benvolio. In response, Faustus makes horns sprout from Benvolios head. Thirsting for revenge, Benvolio, aided by his friends Martino and Fredericke, ambushes Faustus on a lonely path:

Make the Night Hideous: Four English-Canadian Charivaris, 1881–1940

foregrounded here—a theme taken up again in Chapter 8, where their work in the mines is discussed. Chapter 3 focuses on the supposedly uncontaminated local culture that attracted missionaries, educators, folklorists, and other outsiders, including Cecil Sharp and Pete Seeger. The impact of the Civil War, and feuds between families, accentuated divisions and led to bloodshed. Chapter 4 considers religion, including fundamentalist reliance on the Bible, the practice of snake-handling, and the phenomenon of speaking in tongues. The bulk of the work is, of course, devoted to mining, which followed deforestation by logging companies, and especially to the exploitation by outsiders of the vast local mineral resources. This was specifically expedited by the use of the so-called broad-form deed, which gave the purchaser the right “to mine any coal . . . any way that was feasible” (p. 99). The tensions and outright opposition to this exploitation, and later to the process of unionisation, resulted in strikes, looting, violence, and bloodshed for several decades. The situation was exacerbated by heavy-handed methods of attempted suppression, notably under the direction of the notorious Sheriff J.H. Blair. On several occasions, the National Guard was sent to restore order. The continued violence led to the stigmatising of the locality as “bloody Harlan” by outsiders. Alongside this, the miners had to continue their backbreaking and dangerous work, and cope with injury and debilitating silicosis and black lung. The final chapters deal with the exodus of the local population following the decline of mining, and the place of Harlan in the wider context of the USA and the democratic movement. Chapter 15, aptly entitled “Staying Alive,” brings us back to the overriding theme of the book: the struggle for survival. In spite of the despoiling of the landscape, the poisoning of earth and water, and the floods and mudslides consequent on mountaintop removal, and strip-mining particularly, the community has survived, and with enlightened help and encouragement remains determined and open to new possibilities. Above all, the voices of those who survived so many hardships bring the story of Harlan dramatically to life in this exemplary book.

The Anglo-Scottish Ballad and its Imaginary Contexts

From the perspective of early modern perceptions of witchcraft, it is also important that pamphlet literature has been drawn upon, as the new edition no longer has the first edition’s section given over to ‘Dramatic Representations of Witchcraft’. Levack states in the preface to the second edition that he ‘reluctantly decided’ (xv) to remove this section to make room for more material on witchcraft trials, which had been requested by teachers and lecturers who had used the first edition. The Witchcraft Sourcebook offers the opportunity to compare popular modern-day images of the witch with early modern portrayals and to trace the origin of certain tropes, such as witches as women or as servants of Satan. It also offers a chance to compare differing accounts of accusations and the gathering of evidence of witchcraft from cultures across Europe. However, as Levack notes, ‘as a record of popular beliefs and practices . . . these legal records have serious limitations and must be treated with appropriate caution’ (2). Routledge, the publishers of The Witchcraft Sourcebook (and The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe) have provided a dedicated companion website for Levack’s books (http://www.routledge. com/cw/levack), aiming to give greater context and an element of interactivity. As it is envisaged that the website would be referred to by anyone reading the book, it is important to add a few comments about it. In the main, this website is impressive: a map showing the geographical spread of witch-hunts and witch trials across Europe is an excellent feature, as are a timeline outlining the key events in the history of European witchcraft, a glossary explaining key terms, a filmed interview with Levack, and an extensive bibliography. However, an image gallery containing nine sections (Maleficia, Witches, The Devil and Demons, Pact with the Devil, The Sabbath, Flight, Demonic Possession, Torture and Swimming, and Executions) is not as impressive nor as professional as the other features of the website: none of the seventy-three images are credited with their bibliographic details and some of the reproductions are rather roughly scanned and cropped. (By way of comparison, the thirteen images between the physical pages of The Witchcraft Sourcebook are fully contextualized with their bibliographic details included). Given the growing proliferation of impressive online image libraries, the presentation of these images on the companion website does not match the standard of presentation of the rest of the resources it contains. The Witchcraft Sourcebook provides both a means of entry and an impressive supporting structure to researchers interested in the development of ideas on witchcraft in Europe, up to the eighteenth century. Folklorists will have to look elsewhere, however, for accounts of the survival of ideas about—and fears of—witchcraft in later centuries.