The play was evidently produced just after the Lancaster Assizes, whilst four of the accused were in the Fleet prison, London, for further examination, and the King’s pardon had not as yet been pronounced. This is evident from the Epilogue, which commences: Now while the witches must expect their due, By lawfull justice, we appeale to you For favourable censure; what their crime May bring upon ’em ripens yet of time Has not reveal’d. Perhaps great mercy may, After just condemnation, give them day Of longer life. It will be convenient to consider in this connexion a drama largely founded upon Heywood and Brome, and produced nearly half a century later at the Duke’s House, Dorset Garden, Shadwell’s _The Lancashire Witches and Teague o Divelly, the Irish Priest_, which was first seen in the autumn of 1681 (probably in September). The idea of using magic in a play was obviously suggested to Shadwell by his idolized Ben Jonson’s _Masque of Queens_, performed at Whitehall, 2 February, 1609. In close imitation of his model Shadwell has further appended copious notes to Acts one, two, three, and five, giving his references for the details of his enchantments. In the Preface (4to, 1682) he naïvely confesses: “For the magical part I had no hopes of equalling _Shakespear_ in fancy, who created his witchcraft for the most part out of his own imagination (in which faculty no man ever excell’d him), and therefore I resolved to take mine from authority. And to that end there is not one action in the Play, nay, scarce a word concerning it, but is borrowed from some antient, or modern witchmonger. Which you will find in the notes, wherein I have presented you a great part of the doctrine of witchcraft, believe it who will.” And he has indeed copious citations from Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Propertius, Juvenal, Tibullus, Seneca, Tacitus, Lucan, Petronius, Pliny, Apuleius, Aristotle, Theocritus, Lucian, Theophrastus; S. Augustine, S. Thomas Aquinas; Baptista Porta; Ben Jonson (_The Sad Shepherd_); from the _Malleus Maleficarum_ of James Sprenger, O.P., and Henry Institor (Heinrich Kramer), written _circa_ 1485-89, from Jean Bodin’s (1520-96) _La Demonomanie des Sorciers_, 1580; the _Dæmonolatria_, 1595, of Nicolas Remy; _Disquisitionum Magicarum libri six_ of Martin Delrio, S.J. (1551-1608); _Historia Rerum Scoticarum_, Paris, 1527, of Hector Boece (1465-1536); _Formicarius_, 5 vols., Douai, 1602, of John Nider, O.P. (1380-1438); _De Præstigiis Dæmonum_, 1563, by the celebrated John Weyer, physician to the Duke of Cleves; _De Gentibus Septentrionalibus_,[13] Rome, 1555, by Olaus Magnus, the famous Archbishop of Upsala; _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, 1584, by Reginald Scot; _Dæmonomagia_, by Philip Ludwig Elich, 1607; _De Strigimagis_, by Sylvester Mazzolini, O.P. (1460-1523), Master of the Sacred Palace and champion of the Holy See against the heresiarch Luther; _Compendium Maleficarum_ (Milan, 1608), by