Music, Community, and Middleton's Anti-Masque in The Witch

This essay argues that the musical performances in Middleton's The Witch (ca 1616), largely dismissed by critics as unsophisticated spectacles, are some of the play's most innovative features. The witches' songs implicitly critique the patriarchal order that has led to the dysfunctional intrigues of the courtly world from which they are excluded and offer the audience an alternative centred on a joyful, supportive community of women. To do this, Middleton's play appropriates and subverts the musical dynamics of Ben Jonson's Masque of Queens (1609), deconstructing conventional associations between music and social harmony, and invites the audience to explore alternative social formations.