Shadwell in 1681 took Witchcraft seriously, and notwithstanding the half-hearted disclaimer in his address “To the Reader” that prefaces _The Lancashire Witches_ I think he was sensible enough to recognize the truth which lies at the core of the matter in spite of the grotesqueness of the formulæ and spells doting hags and warlocks are wont to employ. Witchcraft was still a capital offence when some fifteen years later Congreve lightly laughed it out of court. Foresight (_Love for Love_), “an illiterate old Fellow, peevish and positive, superstitious, and pretending to understand Astrology, Palmistry, Phisiognomy, Omens, Dreams, etc.,” is in close confabulation with his young daughter’s Nurse, when Angelica his niece trips in to ask the loan of his coach, her own being out of order. He says no, and presses her to remain at home, muttering to himself some old doggerel which bodes no good to the house if all the womenfolk are gadding abroad. The lady fleers him, twits him with jealousy of his young wife: “Uncle, I’m afraid you are not Lord of the Ascendant, ha! ha! ha!” He is obstinate in his refusal; and she retorts: “I can make Oath of your unlawful Midnight Practices; you and the Old Nurse there.... I saw you together, through the Key-hole of the Closet, one Night, like _Saul_ and the Witch of _Endor_, turning the Sieve and Sheers, and pricking your Thumbs to write poor innocent Servants’ Names in Blood about a little Nutmeg-Grater, which she had forgot in the Caudle-Cup.” “Hussy, Cockatrice,” storms the old fellow beside himself with rage. Angelica mocks him even more bitterly, accuses him and the Nurse of nourishing a familiar, “a young Devil in the shape of a Tabby-Cat,” and with a few last thrusts she departs, trilling with merriment, in a sedan-chair. To return for a brief space to an earlier generation when it would have hardly been possible, or at least highly inadvisable, to treat Witchcraft in this blithesome mood, of two plays that would almost certainly have been of great interest in this connexion we have only the names, _The Witch of Islington_, acted in 1597, and _The Witch Traveller_, licensed in 1623. In addition to _The Masque of Queens_, which as has already been noted, served to some extent for a model to Shadwell when inditing his encyclopædic notes on magic, Ben Jonson in that sweet pastoral _The Sad Shepherd_ introduces a Scotch witch, Maudlin. The character is drawn with vigorous strokes; realism mingles with romance. During the quarrel scene which opens _The Alchemist_ Face threatens Subtle: I’ll bring thee, rogue, within The statute of sorcerie, _tricesimo tertio_ Of Harry the Eight. Dapper the gull asks Subtle for a familiar, as Face explains (I, 2): Why, he do’s aske one but for cups, and horses, A rifling flye: none o’ your great familiars.