APPENDIX.
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THE TRAGEDY OF WITCHCRAFT.
As the tragedy of Witchcraft has not been published, nor is likely to be, while the dramatic interests of the country are unprotected by any copyright law, it may not be amiss to afford the reader a further opportunity of passing his judgment on this production by a few extracts, and the publication of a contemporary comment on the play, with a letter in the Evening Post, giving an account of its first performance.
“The curtain rises in the new play upon a scene in a wood, and we are immediately introduced to the witch-haunted atmosphere of the era, for the spirit of that great persecution was abroad, as it were, in the air, and surrounded everything as a mysterious Presence. The first words between two of the yeomanry are tinctured with the popular superstition. We feel from the very moment that there is a general blight, a tendency to evil that cannot be resisted. This is the perfection of the Tragic interest, and it never leaves us through the piece. It was a time of Superstition, when the Prince of the Powers of the Air set up his throne in Salem, clung to the skirts of the dark wood, hung threatening in the blackness of the cloud, interpreted his mysteries in the flight of birds, hung out his inscriptions in the withered folds of old women’s faces, to be read by conceited interpreters of Heaven’s law, and hypocritical men of cruelty. A fearful time that. In the play all this is felt, as the talk of the characters keeps continually approaching, by a species of fascination, as it were, the fatal subject. Day by day it gathers strength. From distant regions it is heard of in the neighbouring villages, and gradually approaches, like some fell disease, closing in upon the life—the devoted town of Salem, and within that town of Salem, at its very heart, the lives and persons of a man and woman of no ordinary mould among those townspeople, the hero and heroine of the play—the Mother and Son of the story. There are several passions at work in the Drama—there is Bigotry seeking its victim, Christianity borrowing weapons from Hell to circumvent the Devil—the jealousy of the lover serving God and his passion, too, at the same time, and calling Revenge—Religion—there are petty cowardice and curiosity, but far above them all, striking a root in nature deeper even than the miscalled devotion of those times, the relation between a mother and her son—the untaught emotion of boyhood rising up bolder and stronger than the inveterate hardihood and selfish hypocrisy of manhood. By this simple element of strength one human being at least is saved, and the expedients of that miserable age shattered and almost driven back from their strongholds.
How all this and more is done those who have seen or will soon witness this
