In the Antipodes Brome introduces ‘a States-man studious for the Commonwealth, solicited by Projectors of the Country’. Brome’s list of projects (quoted in Gifford’s edition) is a broad caricature. Wilson, in the Restoration drama, produced a play called The Projectors, in which Jonson’s influence is apparent (see Introduction, [p. lxxv]).
Among the characters, of which the seventeenth century writers were so fond, the projector is a favorite figure. John Taylor,[81] the water-poet, furnishes us with a cartoon entitled ‘The complaint of M. Tenterhooke the Projector and Sir Thomas Dodger the Patentee’. In the rimes beneath the picture the distinction between the projector, who ‘had the Art to cheat the Common-weale’, and the patentee, who was possessed of ‘tricks and slights to pass the seale’, is brought out with especial distinctness. Samuel Butler’s character[82] of the projector is of less importance, since it was not published until 1759. The real importance of Jonson’s satire lies in the fact that it appeared in the midst of the most active discussion on the subject of monopolies. Drummond says that he was ‘accused upon’ the play, and that the King ‘desired him to conceal it’.[83] Whether the subject which gave offense was the one which we have been considering or that of witchcraft, it is, however, impossible to determine.
3. Witchcraft
Witchcraft in Jonson’s time was not an outworn belief, but a living issue. It is remarkable that the persecutions which followed upon this terrible delusion were comparatively infrequent during the Middle Ages, and reached their maximum only in the seventeenth century.
The first English Act against witchcraft after the Norman Conquest was passed in 1541 (33 Hen. VIII. c. 8). This Act, which was of a general nature, and directed against various kinds of sorceries, was followed by another in 1562 (5 Eliz. c. 16). At the accession of James I. in 1603 was passed 1 Jac. I. c. 12, which continued law for more than a century.
During this entire period charges of witchcraft were frequent. In Scotland they were especially numerous, upwards of fifty being recorded during the years 1596-7.[84] The trial of Anne Turner in 1615, in which charges of witchcraft were joined with those of poisoning, especially attracted the attention of Jonson. In 1593 occurred the trial of the ‘three Witches of Warboys’, in 1606 that of Mary Smith, in 1612 that of the earlier Lancashire Witches, and of the later in 1633. These are only a few of the more famous cases. Of no less importance in this connection is the attitude of the King himself. In the famous Demonology[85] he allied himself unhesitatingly with the cause of superstition. Witchcraft was of course not without its opponents, but these were for the most part obscure men and of little personal influence. While Bacon and Raleigh were inclining to a belief in witchcraft, and Sir Thomas Browne was offering his support to persecution, the cause of reason was intrusted to such champions as Reginald Scot, the author of the famous Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, a work which fearlessly exposes the prevailing follies and crimes. It is on this side that Jonson places himself. That he should make a categorical statement as to his belief or disbelief in witchcraft is not to be expected. It is enough that he presents a picture of the pretended demoniac, that he makes it as sordid and hateful as possible, that he draws for us in the person of Justice Eitherside the portrait of the bigoted, unreasonable, and unjust judge, and that he openly ridicules the series of cases which he used as the source of his witch scenes (cf. Act. 5. Sc. 3).
To form an adequate conception of the poet’s satirical purpose in this play one should compare the methods used here with the treatment followed in Jonson’s other dramas where the witch motive occurs. In The Masque of Queens, 1609, and in The Sad Shepherd, Jonson employed the lore of witchcraft more freely, but in a quite different way. Here, instead of hard realism with all its hideous details, the more picturesque beliefs and traditions are used for purely imaginative and poetical purposes.
The Masque of Queens was presented at Whitehall, and dedicated to Prince Henry. Naturally Jonson’s attitude toward witchcraft would here be respectful. It is to be observed, however, that in the copious notes which are appended to the masque no contemporary trials are referred to. The poet relies upon the learned compilations of Bodin, Remigius, Cornelius Agrippa, and Paracelsus, together with many of the classical authors. He is clearly dealing with the mythology of witchcraft. Nightshade and henbane, sulphur, vapors, the eggshell boat, and the cobweb sail are the properties which he uses in this poetic drama. The treatment does not differ essentially from that of Middleton and Shakespeare.
In The Sad Shepherd the purpose is still different. We have none of the wild unearthliness of the masque. Maudlin is a witch of a decidedly vulgar type, but there is no satirical intent. Jonson, for the purpose of his play, accepts for the moment the prevailing attitude toward witchcraft, and the satisfaction in Maudlin’s discomfiture doubtless assumed an acquiescence in the popular belief. At the same time the poetical aspect is not wholly forgotten, and appears with especial prominence in the beautiful passage which describes the witch’s forest haunt, beginning: ‘Within a gloomy dimble she doth dwell’. The Sad Shepherd and the masque are far more akin to each other in their treatment of witchcraft than is either to The Devil is an Ass.