21 The Witch displays witch practices (covens, flying etc.) that used to be seen as more typical of continental European than English belief, the latter usually being characterised as revolving around simple maleficium or casting a spell of misfortune on someone.

22 See Peter Stallybrass, ‘Macbeth and Witchcraft’, in Focus on ‘Macbeth’, ed. John Russell Brown (1982), p. 206.

23 See note 13. Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, p. 111, suggests that ‘Francisca … seems like a first sketch for Beatrice-Joanna’.

24 Bed tricks used by male Renaissance dramatists generally have the woman deceiving the man, and the trick works. By contrast the Restoration dramatist Aphra Behn in The Lucky Chance rewrites and reverses the device of the bed trick: the woman to be deceived realises what is happening and prevents it.

25 Anne Lancashire, ‘The Witch: Stage Flop or Political Mistake?’, pp. 172–3

26 See, e.g., John F. McElroy, Parody and Burlesque in the Tragicomedies of Thomas Middleton (1972); Samuel Schoenbaum, ‘Middleton’s Tragi-comedies’, Modern Philology 54 (1956), 7–19; Inga-Stina Ewbank, ‘The Middle of Middleton’.

27 Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, pp. 143–7. Glynne Wickham discusses staging possibilities in relation to sections of The Witch that appear in Macbeth in ‘To Fly or Not to Fly? The Problem of Hecate in Shakespeare’s Macbeth’, in Essays on Drama and Theatre (1973).

28 For a review of this production see Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 29 (1986–7), 63.

29 Information provided by Ken Woodgate, Melbourne

30 ‘The Middle of Middleton’, p. 157

31 E.g. F. P. Wilson, ‘Ralph Crane, Scrivener to the King’s Players’, The Library 7 (1926), 194–215; W. W. Greg, ‘Some Notes on Crane’s Manuscript of The Witch’, The Library 22 (1942), 208–22; T. H. Howard-Hill, ‘Shakespeare’s Earliest Editor, Ralph Crane’, Shakespeare Survey 44 (1992), 113–29; ‘A Game at Chess’ by Thomas Middleton: A Textual Edition Based on the Manuscripts Written by Ralph Crane, ed. Milton Arthur Buettner (1980).