Part of the Casebooks Series

The Changeling is a popular Renaissance tragedy in which the relationship between money, sex, and power is explored. Frequently performed and studied in University courses, it is a key text in the New Mermaids series.

For Jacobean society, witchcraft was a potent and very real force, an area of sharp controversy in which King James I himself participated and a phenomenon that attracted many dramatists and writers. The three plays in this book - Sophonisba, The Witch and The Witch of Edmonton - reflect the variety of belief in witches and practice of witchcraft in the Jacobean period. Jacobean understanding of witchcraft is illuminated by the close study of these contrasting texts in relation to each other and to other contemporary works: The Masque of Queenes; Dr Faustus; Macbeth and The Tempest. The introduction and detailed commentaries explore the considerable theatrical potential of plays which, with the exception of The Witch of Edmonton, have been hitherto lost to the dramatic repertory.

Following the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign in the early seventeenth century, the new court of King James was beset by political instability and moral corruption. This atmosphere provided fertile ground for the dramatists of the age, whose plays explore the ways in which social decadence and the abuse of power breed resentment and lead inexorably to violence and bloody retribution. In Tourneur's The Revenger's Tragedy, the debauched son of an Italian Duke attempts to rape the virtuous Gloriana - a veiled reference to Elizabeth I. Webster's The White Devil depicts a sinister world of intrigue and murderous infidelity, while The Changeling, perhaps Middleton's supreme achievement, powerfully portrays a woman bringing about her own unwitting destruction. All three are masterpieces of brooding intensity, dominated by images of decay, disillusionment and death.