villanous old impostor and baby-farmer from
the condign punishment due to her misdeeds; but the severest of criminal
judges if not of professional witch-finders might be satisfied with the
justice or injustice done upon "the late Lancashire Witches" in the
bright and vigorous tragicomedy which, as we learn from Mr. Fleay, so
unwarrantably and uncharitably (despite a disclaimer in the epilogue)
anticipated the verdict of their judges against the defenceless victims
of terrified prepossession and murderous perjury. But at this time of
day the mere poetical reader or dramatic student need not concern
himself, while reading a brilliant and delightful play, with the
soundness or unsoundness of its moral and historical foundations. There
may have been a boy so really and so utterly possessed by the devil who
seems now and then to enter into young creatures of human form and
be-monster them as to amuse himself by denouncing helpless and harmless
women to the most horrible of deaths on the most horrible of charges:
that hideous passing fact does not affect or impair the charming and
lasting truth of Heywood's unsurpassable study, the very model of a
gallant and life-like English lad, all compact of fearlessness and fun,
audacity and loyalty, so perfectly realized and rendered in this quaint
and fascinating play. The admixture of what a modern boy would call
cheek and chaff with the equally steadfast and venturesome resolution of
the indomitable young scapegrace is so natural as to make the
supernatural escapades in which it involves him quite plausible for the
time to a reader of the right sort: even as (to compare this small
masterpiece with a great one) such a reader, while studying the
marvellous text of Meinhold, is no more sceptical than is their
chronicler as to the sorceries of Sidonia von Bork. And however
condemnable or blameworthy the authors of "The Witches of Lancashire"
may appear to a modern reader or a modern magistrate or jurist for their
dramatic assumption or presumption in begging the question against the
unconvicted defendants whom they describe in the prologue as "those
witches the fat jailor brought to town," they can hardly have been
either wishful or able to influence the course of justice toward
criminals of whose evident guilt they were evidently convinced.
Shadwell's later play of the same name, though not wanting in such rough
realistic humor and coarse-grained homespun interest as we expect in the
co