The Visual Spectacle of Witchcraft in Jacobean Plays

About the Book

The Visual Spectacle of Witchcraft in Jacobean Plays: Blackfriars Theatre is an ideal reference for early modern scholars and lecturers who seek a thorough and practical guide to stage directions in print and performance, and paying particular attention to the early texts as evidence of performance practice. Stage directions here are re-thought in the light of early theatre practice, and the issues of stage directions as evidence of performance practice and later interpolations, in association with witchcraft, of several Jacobean plays can be found in this book.
This book includes a general introduction to Blackfriars witchcraft plays and the Jacobean theatre, a chronology, suggestions for further reading and discussing performance options on both indoor and outdoor playhouses, and a commentary. The illuminating and informative general introduction and the short introductions to individual plays have been revised in the light of current scholarship.

About the Author

Dr. Shokhan Rasool Ahmed earned her PhD degree in early modern English drama at the University of Leicester (2014), her MA degree in English Literature, Place, and Identity at the University of Exeter (2009), and her BA degree in English language and literature at the University of Sulaimani (2006). Her teaching and main research interests include early modern literature (especially drama), Shakespeare studies, late 18th-century novel, place and identity. She has recently published a book on witches and magicians on stage, entitled Magic and Gender in Early Modern England. Her third book will also be published shortly entitled The Staging of Witchcraft and a “Spectacle of Strangeness”: Witchcraft at Court and the Globe. She has also published several articles on witchcraft plays in the International Journal of Literature and Arts. She is now teaching English drama and novel in the English Department of the University of Sulaimani.