Magic on the Early English Stage.

Magic on the Early English Stage, by Philip Butterworth. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. Pp. ix + 295. Hardcover $85.00.

Magic is a marvelous subject, literally. It's not surprising that the wonder of it, magic's promise and allure, held sway over much of medieval and early modern thought. Any scholar interested in the field must choose from a variety of crossroads before gaining access to magic's lair. The intersections are many: alchemy and Neoplatonism; witchcraft and sorcery (black magic and white); the miracles of the saints, their stories and statues; the magician's as well as the mountebank's agile sleight of hand; and, of course, theatrical illusion, cannily staged on a pageant wagon, in a playhouse, for a palace wedding or a royal parade. Though magic's territory is far-reaching, the point of contact between practitioner and audience (and perhaps even the scholar who studies them) is one and the same--not faith, as one might expect, but recognition of what magic has to offer. That is to say, all parties query and answer the same question: Is the "trick," no matter how it is achieved, worth the asking price?

For Butterworth's book Magic on the Early English Stage, the asking price is $85.00. It's a fair price, for Butterworth is an accomplished and careful scholar, and his crossroad is clearly marked for the reader. He is not interested in magic as an access to the supernatural, a child of science, or a metaphor for power. He is interested in illusion--the trick of magic, and how that trick is accomplished. What he offers his audience is a thorough analysis of the many illusions performed by the juggler (arguably the most common name for magicians in medieval/Renaissance Europe) as well as some interesting insights into how the juggler's art is appropriated, literally and/or linguistically, by the playwright, the con man, the church and its critics, as well as the culture at large.

Overall, Magic on the Early English Stage reads much like a magician's how-to manual. A quick glance at Butterworth's chapter headings (for example, "Conveyance and Confederacy," "Appearances and Disappearances," "Magic through Sound: Illusion, Deception and Agreed Pretence," "Mechanical Images, Automata, Puppets and Motions," "Substitution," and "Stage Tricks") gives you some idea of the vast array of magic tricks and illusions to be spotlighted for the reader. Eyewitness accounts and secondhand anecdotes are particularly tantalizing. Be amazed at the story of Brandon, the King's Juggler, who drew a picture of a bird on the public square, and when he stabbed his drawing with a knife, a pigeon miraculously fell from the sky. (This performance proved so horrifying that Brandon was sworn never to repeat the trick again.) Wonder at the power of Feats, who could test the honor of a maid by commanding his knife to fly from a bucket of water into the rafters above: no flight, no virgin. Marvel at the multiple retellings of the famed Indian rope trick, where a boy, a man, a woman, a hare, a dog, a hog, a panther, a lion, and a tiger were all said (at one time or another) to ascend a rope leading nowhere to disappear before your very eyes.

Of course, we are not allowed to marvel at these feats for long, as Butterworth's goal is to explain the "how" hidden by the magician. His primary sources prove surprisingly specific and illuminate the importance of wellcrafted illusion in early modern England. In Discoverie of Witchcraft (the first book to betray the juggler's secrets), Reginald Scot offers a detailed explanation of the art of decollation, including an illustration of the contraption needed to decapitate a man and serve his head on a platter. William Vincent, whose early seventeenth-century book on magic boasts his own stage name, Hocus Pocus Iunior, not only reveals the appropriate moves to make four balls disappear, but also the needed patter to misdirect the audience. Drawing on countless stage directions and a variety of theatrical sources, including the intriguing Volume of Secrets of a Provencal Stage Director's Book, Butterworth explicates numerous references to the illusions required of medieval and early modern drama as well as the equipment needed to create them: slow-moving dumbwaiters to resurrect Christ; trick gibbets to hang his betrayer (though beware, one Judas hung so long he needed reviving); revolving tables that snap into place to make a banquet disappear; exceedingly long leaden pipes used to carry the voices of ghosts and severed heads across the stage; retractable bodkins, false bellies, and hidden bladders of blood to effect the needed carnage for religious drama and revenge tragedies; and my personal favorite, polished bowls carefully placed to catch the light of the sun to create an aura for Jesus and his disciples! Of course, not every explanation is necessarily plausible, but Butterworth is quick to admit that it's "sometimes the case that explanations offered by jugglers or modern-day conjurors of their tricks are in themselves further obfuscations designed to misdirect" (97).

Though the numerous examples provide an impressive behind-the-scenes look at the performance of magic, Butterworth's analysis does offer more than a list of tricks. Emerging from the book is an understanding of the early modern juggler, himself: his fee to perform (or not perform); his place among other popular feats of activity (vaulting, tumbling, rope dancing); his wizardlike cap and wand, and brightly colored costume: billowing sleeves, baggy pants, and magician's purse, all hiding multiple illusions in the making. Here again, Butterworth's primary sources are more than varied, ranging from the obvious to the obscure: dictionaries, diaries, memoirs, letters, travel literature, essays, pamphlets, license records, costume orders, books on magic (then and now), plus a multitude of references where the juggler's magic has been appropriated for the stage: passion plays, moralities, mystery cycles, early modern tragedies and comedies, and all the paperwork that goes with them: account books, performance records, stage directions, and property lists. Of course, the author draws heavily on Records of Early English Drama and the Malone Society Collections series, but he also provides some hitherto unpublished material in his appendices.

Perhaps equally important, Butterworth takes a look at how the juggler's art was viewed by society, especially in regards to the art of deception. This connection can be quite literal, as some jugglers merged the art of magic with the art of the con; but there are also many theatrical references to the juggler and his art, as one might expect to find, say, in Ben Jonson's comedies. Butterworth's close analysis of language also suggests that the vocabulary of the juggler often emerges in the period like a lawyer joke; that is to say, the magician's image and art can be used to insult not only a pickpocket, a card-sharp, a dice player, a fortuneteller, a charlatan, a mountebank, a quacksalver, and a witch, but also a would-be lover, a Catholic priest, and yes, even a lawyer. The book, however, also offers one fabulous example when the magician is both condemned and saved by his art. While performing abroad in France, Richard Banks and his magical horse Morocco are accused of sorcery, and indeed how else could you explain a horse who could "count coins, identify a specific card picked out by a member of the audience, pretend to be dead by lying on his back with his legs in the air, curtsy, dance, fight, piss and operate whilst blindfolded" (66)? But the wily juggler promptly proves his horse is no agent of the devil. He instructs him to seek out a man with a cross on his hat, kneel in respect, then kiss the rood to prove his master's innocence and that of his own. According to two anecdotes, Morocco bows before the man, then jumps up and slurps the patron's head. Presto! All is forgiven, for what demon would dare do that, even for applause?

I obviously love the subject of this book and commend the author's research; his notes and bibliography are both extensive and impressive. I did, however, sometimes find the prosaic quality of Butterworth's analysis a shade dry. His linguistic analysis of the juggler's vocabulary, while scholarly, can also be a bit repetitive (though his synthesis in the last chapter is quite helpful). To be fair, the subject may demand a no-nonsense approach, especially as this scholar's job is to explain away a magic that enchants by deception.

My own longing for something more suggestive might, in fact, be born from the wealth of the book's references, which indirectly invite the reader to make her own connections. For example, at several points in the book, Butterworth offers examples where magic and death intersect: most notably, jugglers' epitaphs as well as Lydgate's haunting translation of Boccaccio's "The Daunce of Machabree, " where "Death speaketh to master John Rikil Tregetour [magician]":

Master Joun Rikil whilom Tregetour
Of Noble Henry King of England
& of Fraunce ye mightie conquerour,
For al the sleights and turning of thine hond
Thou must come nere my daunce to vnderstond
Nought may auayle al thy conclusions,
For death shortly nother on sea ne lond,
Is not deceiued by none illusions.

(qtd in Butterworth 49-50)

The "key" point for Butterworth is the phrase "turning of thine hond," which offers more proof that jugglers utilized sleight of hand in their tricks (50). But such a fabulous example (paired with the jugglers' epitaphs and perhaps even theatrical illusions of resurrection) might also lead to some interesting parallels between our attraction to magic and our fear of death: that is to say, our happy willingness to embrace the illusions of the juggler, who seems able to transcend the boundaries of reality with his art, and our denial of death, whose boundary must be crossed and who "is not deceived by none illusions." But again, the book's journey is not to explore our desire to feel wonder, what it gives to us, or the price we're willing to pay to experience it. Instead, Magic on the Early English Stage focuses on how the magician manipulates that desire, how he utilizes misdirection, magic words, theatrical patter, and mechanical devices to create the type of special effects demanded by an early modern audience.

If the magician's task is to do the impossible, say, to make the laws of nature seemingly disappear, then the critic's job is to make the trick disappear. Butterworth has done a credible job of illuminating the craft behind the illusion, and thus "stretch[ing] out imaginations even unto" understanding, if not wonder. (1) Magic on the Early English Stage offers a much needed synthesis and analysis of not only the importance of illusion, but also the business of magic, in the medieval and Renaissance period. I have no doubt this book will appear in many a future footnote.

Note

(1.) This phrase comes from Butterworth's epigraph, where he quotes Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa: "For the ende of this skil is not to doo simplely, but to stretche out imaginations euen vnto apperaunce, of whiche there shall afterwarde no sign appeare." I have modernized the spelling in my text.

Reviewer: Marina Favila