This essay demonstrates how the dual plots of The Witch of Edmonton and Henry Goodcole's related pamphlet are unified by their common concern with the legal and performative power of words. Both play and pamphlet emphasize the power of speech, in particular the swearing of oaths and confessions, to constitute and to transform identity. Though patterned after its source pamphlet, the play ultimately diverges to demonstrate how speech legitimated by the processes of law often awkwardly coexists with its more popular expression, thereby simultaneously critiquing early modern law while laying claim to the very power that enables it.
While critics have relied upon bibliographical data and his translation of Thucydides to establish the early Thomas Hobbes as a humanist, this essay argues that substantive evidence to support this conclusion can be found in the comparatively neglected discourses of the Horae Subsecivae. Reading Hobbe's contribution to the Horae alongside his translation of Thucydides reveals a consistent concern with the political potential of both verbal and visual images and with the dangers rhetorical manipulation could pose to individual and sovereign authority. Together these texts demonstrate an early Hobbes already deeply invested in the political debates and crises of his era.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.