Enchanting Music: How English Playwrights Use Music in Renaissance Witchcraft Plays

Music is an integral aspect of the Early Modern theater, but because most of this music is lost, scholars and students typically only analyze these works using literary theories. This approach does not allow for a full understanding these plays, which is especially true of witchcraft plays because witches typically utilize music for their spells. In this thesis, I am exploring the interdisciplinary connection of music and literature in the Jacobean witchcraft plays The Witch (c. 1616) by Thomas Middleton and The Tragedy of Sophonisba or The Wonder of Women (1604-1606). From my analysis of the existing music from The Witch and the music’s function in characterizing the witch, I recreated the infernal music from Sophonisba to gain new insights into this play’s witch figure. From this project, I intend to emphasize the importance of musical analysis in discourses on Early Modern witchcraft plays and inspire interdisciplinary research into these works