[Andrew Loeb]

I have nothing especially exciting in the way of final thoughts other than to say thanks, Nora, for organizing this. It was a lot of fun revisiting this play, and the rich variety of insights that everyone offered made it a really enlightening experience. Hope everyone is well. Keep me in the loop if you’ve got any other wacky plays you want to talk about.

[Andrew Loeb]

Like Peter, I was struck by the references to the devil as a hound and what seems like an obvious reference to Dog in The Witch of Edmonton.  He’s not an actual dog here (Merlin references his human shape), but is he doggish?

There’s actually a ton of intertextual references to other witch/magic plays in this act. In addition to the Witch of Edmonton, I’m hearing both Masque of Queens and Marston’s Sophonisba in the musical cues (Joan calls it “infernal music,” which shows up in musical stage directions for both–the latter is reinforced by Edol’s comparison of Artesia to Erictho in 5.2).  Joan’s call for darkness to cover her reminds me, too, of Lady Macbeth’s “come thick night” and Macbeth’s “Stars, hide your fires” (though maybe a stretch?). There might be some Macbeth, too, in what seems like an unusual call for “hoeboys” in the stage direction immediately preceding Merlin’s prophecy at the end of the play. Between those and the earlier allusions/borrowings from Friar Bacon and Dr. Faustus, this play really runs the gamut of formerly popular magic/witchcraft dramas.

I’m going to give those hoeboys some more thought and come back if I come up with anything more interesting.

[Andrew Loeb]

Alright! This is what I came for: antic dances, devil charms, quotes from Doctor Faustus, antic dances!

I feel like a pretty solid chunk of my research career so far has involved saying “But what IS an antic dance?” “What IS hollow and infernal music?”

But let’s back up a bit first. I’m really impressed with just how comprehensively the term “witchcraft” is deployed in this play. We’ve seen it with respect to Artesia’s beauty, Joan’s sexuality, Clown’s love for his sister, and now Modestia’s and then Constantia’s religious conversions. It’s almost as though “witchcraft” is just “anything that bugs men a bit.”

I’m also really digging the musical cues here. We get “soft musick” as Constantia’s wedding party enters the scene in 3.2, which seems to interrupt Modestia’s pious meditations on death. Edwin interprets it as emblematic of her sister’s happy marriage, but Modestia then immediately dismisses it (alongside the ceremony itself) as vanity. Then, a little later, we get the beautiful poetry others have taken note of already in Modestia’s “masque” speech. What strikes me here is the way that Modestia’s perfectly rhymed iambic pentameter arrests and appropriates music’s potential “vanity” and disciplines it in language. Her speech centres on the image of the masque (a highly musical and highly ceremonial entertainment) in a way that immediately disempowers the musical and visual force of the marriage that was supposed to take place. And Constatia’s response, “Her words are powerful! I am amaz’d to hear her!” suggest yet another bewitchment. When Donobert himself recognizes the power of Modestia’s words, he cautions Constatia (too late) to “hear her no more.”

The scene that immediately follows this then opens up with the Devil’s call for a dance number that may or may not involve Hecate (does she exit with the Fates before the dance–the stage direction only has the Fates exiting, but the dialogue implies they all go). I’m not entirely sure what to make of the devil’s suggestion that “anticks” will dance to pass the time–witches? spirits? In Macbeth, Hecate calls for an “antic round,” which may be a model here. That word “antic” doesn’t specifically appear in Middleton’s “The Witch,” from which those scenes are most likely borrowed, or in The Masque of Queens, which Middleton probably used as a model for those songs and dances. But I still suspect that Rowley is thinking of those plays here. At the very least, Jonson’s description of the antimasque dance in Queens might help us with a visual:

with a strange, and sudden Musick they fell into a magical Dance, full of preposterous change, and gesticulation, but most applying to their Property; who at their meetings, do all things contrary to the custom of Men, dancing back
to back, and hip to hip, their hands joined, and making their circles backward, to the left hand, with strange phantastick motions of their heads, and bodies.

I’m assuming based on stage direction and the absence of any sense of a song text that we’re talking an instrumental number here, which is an interesting foil for the presumably more solemn instrumental music in the previous scene.

I’ve already gone on way too long here, so I’ll stop myself there and wait to see if there’s any more fun musical bits in the remaining acts.

I’ll just conclude then by saying that I’m just delighted by the fact that Merlin’s first speech in the play, in response to the question about why he’s reading (reading!), is “To sound the depth / Of arts, of learning, wisdom, knowledge.” That’s a pretty awesomely direct paraphrase of Faustus’s opening speech in Marlowe’s play: “Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin / To sound the depths of that thou wilt profess.”

Fun!

[Andrew Loeb]

Late to the party once again, but I just wanted to quickly add a half-formed thought about how highly concerned this act seems to be with women as threats to masculinity. There’s an interesting parallel being drawn here between Joan and Artesia, both of whom are called “witch” and “devil” by men whose ideas of themselves are threatened by them. And both react with actual or intended violence. There’s a kind of shame-as-contagion thing happening here, especially with respect to Edol’s response to Artesia’s infiltration of the kingdom, that reminds me a bit of Chamont’s conflicted responses to others’ shame (and his own) in Middleton’s The Nice Valour (a very strange and wonderful play that you should all read if you haven’t (hi Kat!)). Edol is impossibly caught between codes of honour that demand, on the one hand, requital for the betrayal of his king and, on the other hand, loyalty to that king. I’ll see if I can gather more coherent thoughts about that as we move into Act 3, but I just wanted to register it here for now.

[Andrew Loeb]

This might just be because I read it recently and it’s on my mind, but the introduction of Artesia is giving me “Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay” vibes. Artesia has a kind of magical power over Aurelius in a way that echoes both Friar Bacon’s magical silencing of his rival (and do I vaguely recall that there’s a magical context later in this play?), Margaret’s charming beauty that enthralls Lacy–but more nefarious.

I can think of examples of love inspiring eloquence (Viola’s willow cabin?), but are there other examples of love resulting in the failure of speech? I feel like there must be but can’t think of any off the top of my head.

 

[Andrew Loeb]

Hi everyone. I just learned this existed tonight, so I’m also a bit of a latecomer. I’m Andrew (he/him/his), and I teach and very occasionally do something like research at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario (kinda north-east of Toronto). My work centers on music in the early modern theatre and I am very slowly embarking (think, like, stepping into a rowboat and pushing off from shore really gently and just sitting for a minute and thinking “yeah, this is kinda nice” to get a sense of the sort of “embarking” we’re talking about here) on a book project on musical communities on the early modern stage. Anyway, I read The Birth of Merlin like fifteen years ago in a wonderful MA seminar taught by Helen Ostovich and I have since completely forgotten what it’s about besides the fact that I remember thinking it was totally bonkers at the time and, frankly, that’s kinda what I’m into. I sometimes write things about magic and witches, so Merlin is interest-adjascent. Anyway, I’m pleased to know this excellent group exists, I will plow through the first act tonight and look forward to an interesting discussion. Hello again, to those of you I do know (some from real-life and some from Twitter) and pleased-to-meetcha to those I don’t.

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