The Witch

HECATE Titty and Tiffin, Suckin and Pidgen, Liard and Robin, White spirits, black spirits, grey spirits, red spirits, Devil-toad, devil-ram, devil-cat, and devil-dam!Thomas Middleton's 1615 political satire is a send-up of the affair between Thomas Overbury, Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset; Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex; and Frances Howard, and also makes fun of King James's fear of witches and the obsession with female virginity by hypocritical male nobles who regularly hire prostitutes. The play was suppressed for over a decade, but interest in it renewed when Howard and Carr were released from imprisonment from the Tower of London in 1622.The play's scribal manuscript survives, and it was first published by Isaac Reed in 1778.This edition features an introduction, notes, and historical background by Elizabeth Schafer, a biographical sketch of Middleton by William C. Carroll, and Ian Spink's piano/vocal arrangements of the original settings two of the play's songs, "In a Maiden Time Profess'd" composed by John Wilson, and "Come Away, Hecate!" composed by Robert Johnson.