f) Apparent references to the scandal: II.ii.131–3 – ‘best folks’ get away with anything (see also V.i.93–4, IV.i.51–3); V.i.51 – ‘strong bill of divorcement’. Almachildes recommends a test for virginity (III.i) before any man embarks on marriage. There is also a general obsession with female virginity and chastity in the play. Amoretta reflects on being a ‘perfect’ maid rather than a ‘cunning’ (i.e. false) one (II.ii.74—6). In IV.i.44 there is a reference to ‘spoon-meat’ as a vehicle for poison, as was believed to be the case in Overbury’s death. There is a possible reference in III.ii.66 to the famous wise man Simon Forman, who was embroiled in Frances’s schemes against Overbury.

Margot Heinemann suggests that The Witch was specifically written with the interests of an anti-Carr patron in mind – a man such as the Earl of Pembroke, who became Lord Chamberlain after Carr’s fall and who has been suggested as the patron of the daring performance of the satire A Game at Chess later in Middleton’s career.14 Reading The Witch as being actively and overtly political is certainly plausible in terms of Middleton’s writing career. He started his career as a playwright writing for The Children of Paul’s, who were famous for their repertoire of satirical plays.15 He represented a real person (Mary Frith) on the stage in his play (with Dekker) The Roaring Girl, and Anne Lancashire has argued that he is the author of the ‘politically charged’ Second Maiden’s Tragedy16. He also wrote about the contemporary malaise of duelling in A Fair Quarrel. A Game at Chess is a very interventionist and particularised attack on clearly recognisable members of James’s court and is also based on a historical incident, a trip to Spain by Prince Charles and Buckingham. Middleton was clearly a politically committed playwright with Protestant sympathies who would relish satirising Frances’s misfortunes, since she was both a murderer and a member of the extremely powerful pro-Catholic Howard faction. The emphasis on satire also explains why the play is not popular today: the topical satire which was once its strength is now largely lost. Similarly, A Game at Chess, once a nine day’s wonder, the longest running theatre hit of the Renaissance, is no longer popular because the target of the satire is now obscure.