Tag Archives: supernatural

Witchcraft on page and stage

The Royal Shakespeare Company is currently staging the multi-authored play The Witch of Edmonton, first performed in 1621. It’s easy to see how attractive the play is since its subject relates so closely to Macbeth. In Shakespeare’s play the weird … Continue reading

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Science versus alchemy

The BBC’s series The Genius of Invention carried on, this week with a major documentary on the greatest of scientists, Isaac Newton . But the documentary revealed a more complicated side to Newton: not just the logical man who made … Continue reading

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Shakespeare and Hallowe’en: not just Macbeth

The Elizabethan and Jacobeans had superstitions covering almost every area of life. Supernatural explanations for natural phenomena were widely accepted: the appearance of a comet in 1577 caused public alarm, and even historian John Stow believed the story that the striking … Continue reading

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