Staging the Supernatural

In addition to using Performance Criticism, this dissertation also employs New Historicism as a theoretical base. The dissertation discusses how popular pamphlets and demonological texts played upon early modern dramatic entertainments and how these entertainments, in turn, engaged with their source materials. A comprehensive view of the supernatural beliefs of the period not only allows us to understand what audiences believed in, but also explains why certain Elizabethan and Jacobean entertainments were written in the manner that they were.