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Forum for Modern Language Studies 2007 43(4):337-350; doi:10.1093/fmls/cqm059
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© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved

Playing with Demons: Interrogating the Supernatural in Jacobean Drama

Laura Kolb

Department of English
322 Wheeler Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720
USA

laurakolb27{at}gmail.com

  Abstract

This essay tracks two types of narrative associated with the Scottish witch events of 1590–91: exemplary and dramatic. The first movement examines how trial interrogations and demonologies use exempla to prove universal truths. The second analyses how dramatic literature exposes the imperfect fit between general principle and particular illustrative tale. Telling the same stories in a different mode, Shakespeare's The Tempest and Macbeth interrogate the authoritative version of events and the authority that produced them.

Key Words: witch • trial • pact • interrogation • narrative • demonology • Scotland • Tempest, The • Macbeth • James VI and I


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