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CURRENT RESEARCH
PROJECTS
Magic and Memory: Conjuring on the Early Seventeenth Century Stage
by
Dr Daryl Chalk
My primary research interest has the broad aim of investigating the efficacy of popular performance in early modern England. This current project investigates the representation of conjuring – a ritual aimed at raising and controlling spirits – in a series of critically neglected dramas that were commercially successful on the public playhouse stages of the early seventeenth century. The research commenced during a stint at the British Library in 2004 with an examination of the practice and status of conjuring in a host of early modern pamphlets, treatises and manuscripts concerning magic, religion, the body and theatre. Of particular interest are plays with magical scenes/themes recalling Marlowe’s Dr.Faustus. These include: The Merry Devil of Edmonton (Anon – 1602), The Devil’s Charter (Barnabe Barnes – 1606), The Whore of Babylon (Thomas Dekker – 1606), The Revenge of Bussy D’ambois (George Chapman – 1607), The Birth of Merlin (Samuel Rowley – 1609), If This Be Not a Good Play, The Devil Is In It (Dekker – 1611) and The Devil is an Ass (Ben Jonson – 1616).
Many of these plays consciously evoke magical scenes from earlier dramas as well as notorious figures associated with occult practices in the popular imagination of Renaissance England, such as John Dee and Simon Forman. Often vehemently anti-Catholic, such plays invest magical ritual with an inveterate theatricality – an association consistent with the descriptions of magical ritual in contemporary manuscripts on conjuring. In their largely sceptical treatment of the efficacy of magic such plays raise self-conscious questions about the efficacy of theatre.