This Wooden O
Antitheatrical writers in early modern England compared the actor’s transformation into a character to a kind of illicit magic. In response, playwrights like William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson created a body of plays that treated the conjuror’s circle as a mirror of the theater. This episode brings you a story of magicians, witches, and the spectacles they conjured: the story of magic on the early modern English stage.
Researched, written, and produced by Corinne Wieben with original music by Purple Planet.
Cover image: Conjectural reconstruction of the Globe theatre by C. Walter Hodges based on archaeological and documentary evidence, CC BY-SA 4.0
Music
Purple Planet - Breaking the Silence
Purple Planet - In Doubt
Purple Planet - Darkness
Purple Planet - Outcast
Purple Planet - Sense of Loss
Purple Planet - Shadowlands
Sources
Primary
Jonson, Ben. Bartholomew Fair. 1614. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/49461/49461-h/49461-h.htm
Marlowe, Christopher. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. 1604. Edited by The Rev. Alexander Dyce. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/779/779-h/779-h.htm.
Prynne, William. Histrio-Mastix: The Player’s Scourge, or Actors Tragedie. London: Michael Sparke, 1633.
Shakespeare, William. Henry VI, Part 1. 1589-90; rev. 1594-95. Excerpted in Witches in Shakespeare. https://wilson.fas.harvard.edu/stigma-in-shakespeare/witches-in-shakespeare.
Shakespeare, William. Henry VI, Part 2. 1590-91. Excerpted in Witches in Shakespeare. https://wilson.fas.harvard.edu/stigma-in-shakespeare/witches-in-shakespeare.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Vol. XLVI, Part 5. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com, 2001. https://www.bartleby.com/46/5/.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. 1606. Excerpted in Witches in Shakespeare. https://wilson.fas.harvard.edu/stigma-in-shakespeare/witches-in-shakespeare.
Secondary
Anders, Lisann. “A show of Illusions: Performing Villainous Magic in Shakespeare’s the Tempest & Macbeth.” In Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and Media, edited by Nizar Zouidi, 105-120. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021.
Chatterjee, Rinku. “Peripheral Knowledge: The Witch, the Magus, and the Mountebank on the Early Modern Stage.” Dissertation. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2013.
Frazer, Elizabeth. “Political Power and Magic.” Journal of Political Power 11, no. 3 (2018): 359-377.
Hawkes, David. “Witchcraft and Representation in Early Modern England.” In The Reign of Anti-Logos, 71-103. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG, 2020.
Hedrick, Donald. “Distracting Othello: Tragedy and the Rise of Magic.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 129, no. 4 (2014): 649-671.
Hopkins, Lisa and Helen Ostovich. Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Group, 2014.
Lucking, David. “Carrying Tempest in His Hand and Voice: The Figure of the Magician in Jonson and Shakespeare.” English Studies 85, no. 4 (2004): 297-310.
Marks, Elise Anne. “‘Excellent Witchcraft’: Shakespeare’s Witches and the Trial of Gender.” Dissertation. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 1996.
Parker, Joy Ellen. “White Magicians in the English Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Divine Power and Human Aspiration.” Dissertation. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2002.
Walker, Katherine. “Magic of the Mundane: Exposing Occult Fraud in Early Modern Drama.” Theatre Journal (Washington, D.C.) 77, no. 3 (2025): 315-330.
Willis, Deborah. “Magic and Witchcraft.” In A New Companion to Renaissance Drama, edited by Arthur F. Kinney and Thomas Warren Hopper, 170-181. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2017.
