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Supernatural Fiction in Early Modern Drama and Culture

Ryan Curtis Friesen
Ryan Curtis Friesen is an Associate Lecturer in English at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse. He has written about the supernatural as a literary theme in the fiction of England and the United States. The present book grew from research completed at the University of Leeds.

	Brings together authors of fiction with philosophers and academics in Early Modern England and compares their ways of describing and understanding the world.
	Explores popular culture as well as the culture of the learned and elite.
	Examines the intellectual consequences of the Reformation and compares the spiritual and doctrinal practices of the occult to those of orthodoxy.

“The volume exemplifies new-historicist interpretive practice at its best. Dr. Friesen’s treatment of the occult and its place in early modern culture is simply brilliant and his particular analyses of how cultural discourses on the occult impact and are impacted by aesthetic form in plays by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Middleton and Ben Jonson, are thoroughly illuminating. Though this volume is very erudite, the exegeses are not unduly burdened by erudition. Supernatural Fiction will be appealing not only to students and scholars in English, but to everyone who is interested in the occult and its discursive function in a society.” Lalita P. Hogan, author of Comparative Poetics: Non-Western Traditions of Literary Theory (1996)

“The distinction made between Magic and the Supernatural in philosophy and in drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is well argued and convincing. Indeed, the philosophers’ approach is often quite ‘dramatic’ and playwrights indulge in supernatural philosophies. In exploring the varieties of scepticism and belief of Agrippa, Bruno, Dee, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson and Middleton, Friesen’s comparative research clearly shows the various modes in which they define the supernatural and how they use it, rhetorically and ethically.” Shimon Levy, dramaturg for the Habimah Theatre and Jerusalem Khan Theatre, and author of The Bible as Theatre and Samuel Beckett’s Self-Referential Drama

“Ryan Friesen’s Supernatural Fiction in Early Modern Drama and Culture shrewdly engages the topic of early modern magic as it shapes and takes shape in a series of representations both nonfictional (in Cornelius Agrippa, John Dee, Giordano Bruno) and fictional (in Shakespeare, Marlowe, Middleton, and Jonson). Friesen examines the popular appeal magic and necromancy held upon the early modern stage, exploring the political and theological implications it offered as a subversive methodology and as a dramatically useful thematic tool. In doing so, Friesen offers a wealth of interesting readings on works that remain central to English Renaissance drama.” David Houston Wood, Northern Michigan University, author of Time, Narrative, and Emotion in Early Modern England

“Acts of magical efficacy were no more possible then than now, says Friesen, so the reports of them can be analyzed not with science but with literary analysis and critical reading. Among his examples are Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno’s natural philosophy, fictional witchcraft, alchemy and angelic communication in the career of John Dee, confusing religious and magical fiction in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Middleton’s The Witch, Ben Jonson’s drama, and the critique of rough art and harsh reason in The Tempest.” Reference & Research Book News

“Friesen offers an incredibly well-written introduction to the supernatural in the early modern era (1510–1625). His presentation begins with purportedly non-fiction works, starting with a discussion of Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, moving onto Bruno’s work, then presenting the sixteenth-century pamphlets on witch trials, and offering commentary on Dee’s angelic interpretations. The second half of the book looks at magic within Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Middleton’s The Witch, multiple of Jonson’s dramas, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
… The book presents a fascinating discussion of the witch trials and the actuality of witches, mentioning that most of those tried as witches in the sixteenth century were married women, while about fifteen percent were men. Friesen compares this to the modern stereotype of witches as old crones. He also discusses the number of admitted witches, presenting various scholarly arguments focusing on the idea that these confessions were a means of creating agency for the accused.
… As Friesen moves into the unarguably fictional texts, the discussion of magic adds a measure of literary analysis. The themes, archetypes, and characterizations of both magic and magic users are described, analyzed, and contextualized. For example, in the final chapter Friesen presents scholarly arguments about Prospero’s magic. He gives the main lines of argument and then evaluates the play according to his reading of Prospero’s use and renunciation of magic, presenting Ariel as dramatized magic and Caliban as the inheritor of a wholly negative rough magic who eventually becomes responsible for himself.
The book provides a fascinating glimpse into the early modern view of magic, through historical and philosophical treatises, pamphlets, diaries and transcriptions of séances, and contemporary dramas. The variety of texts examined makes this work particularly intriguing.” Southwest Journal of Cultures


Magic and the supernatural are common themes in the philosophy and fiction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Supernatural Fiction in Early Modern Drama and Culture explores varieties of scepticism and belief exhibited by a selection of philosophers and playwrights, including Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno, John Dee, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton, explicating how each author defines the supernatural, whether he assumes magic to operate in the world, and how he uses occult principles to explain what can be known and what is ethical.
… Beliefs and claims concerning impossible phenomena and superhuman agency require literary historians to determine whether an occult system of magical operation is being described in a given text. Each chapter in this volume evaluates whether a chosen early modern author is endorsing magic as efficacious or divinely sanctioned, or criticizing it for being fraudulent or unholy. By examining works of fiction, it is possible to explore fantastic settings which were not intended to be synonymous with the early modern audience's everyday experience, settings where magic exists and operates according to the playwrights' designs. This book also sets out to determine what historical sources provided given authors with knowledge of the occult and speculates on how aware an audience would have been of academic, classical, or popular contexts surrounding the text at hand.

INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE: HEINRICH CORNELIUS AGRIPPA AND SIXTEENTH-CENTURY MAGIC Definitions of Magic and Its Practices The Magic of Necromancers Celestial Influence and Astrological Study The Occult Power of Words and Numbers Reason, the Mind, the Soul, and Fate The Accessories of Magical Practice and The Preservation of Occult Knowledge The Consistency and Dissonance of Ideas Religious and Intellectual Heresies and the Sermon of the Sealed Book CHAPTER TWO: THE SUPERNATURAL IN GIORDANO BRUNO’S NATURAL PHILOSOPHY Authority, Authorship, and the Awareness of a Hostile Audience The Transplantation of Gods and the Inculcation of Ethics Muscular Epistemology and the Universality of Fortune’s Reach The Miniscule and the Infinite: Bruno’s Radical Cosmology The Transmission and Influence of Bruno’s Ideas Bruno, Human Nature, and Natural Philosophy Love and Madness, Ptolemy and Copernicus Intellectual Ascent and the Joys of Being Acteon CHAPTER THREE: EARLY MODERN ENGLAND’S BELIEF IN FICTIONAL WITCHCRAFT The Common Fictions of Witchcraft Reconstructing the Typical Witch Challenges to the Notion of a ‘Typical’ Witch The Witch’s Pact and the Witch’s Pet The Machinery of Justice and Its Discontents CHAPTER FOUR: FICTIONS OF ALCHEMY AND ANGELIC COMMUNICATION IN THE CAREER OF JOHN DEE Dee as Elizabethan Scholar Dee as Occult Scholar The Critical Difference Between Fictional Sorcerers and a Sorcerer Who Merely Lies Languages Angelic and Artificial Confronting the Lie in Dee’s Testimony CHAPTER FIVE: THE CONFUSION OF RELIGIOUS AND MAGICAL FICTION IN MARLOWE’S DOCTOR FAUSTUS Necromancy as Symptom, Not Cause, of Faustus’ Damnation Faustus’ Neglected Study of Nature and the Supernatural The Growth of Faustus’ Character and the Restraint of Hell’s Magic Faustus’ Preference for a Familiar Hell over an Amiable Soul CHAPTER SIX: MADNESS AND DAMNATION: THE CONSEQUENCES OF MACBETH’S MAGIC Critical Representations of Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters The Principles of Hecate’s Leadership and the Seduction of Macbeth The Conditions of Macbeth’s Damnation The Doctor of Physic and the Failure of Rational Epistemology CHAPTER SEVEN: WITCHCRAFT, POLITICAL SCANDAL, AND THE THEATRICAL MOMENT OF MIDDLETON’S THE WITCH Adultery, Murder, and Other Clues for Dating The Witch Witchcraft and Gender Policy on Middleton’s Stage Belief in the Operations of Cunning Folk The Witch’s Craft as Metaphor for Courtly Duplicity and Malice Political Misrule and Love Charms Overruled by Villainous Ambition CHAPTER EIGHT: ALCHEMY AND WITCHCRAFT IN THE DRAMA OF BEN JONSON The Feigned Alchemy of Subtle, Face, and Dol Jonson’s Attitude Toward the Occult and the Irrational Occult Practice as the Violation, or Merely the Acceleration, of Nature Sources of Authority and Authority’s Collapse in The Alchemist Alchemy, Nature, and the Spirit as a Character in Mercury Vindicated The Witch as a Negative Exemplar; Witchcraft as a Vice CHAPTER NINE: MAGIC IN THE TEMPEST: SHAKESPEARE’S CRITIQUE OF ROUGH ART AND HARSH REASON Traditions of Magic and Prospero's Motives Prospero as Teacher, Father, Learner Prospero’s Anger as a Symptom of Necessary Rule Medea as Sycorax, Prospero as Medea Ariel as Magic Dramatised Caliban as the Test of Prospero’s Government BIBLIOGRAPHY

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