the room, and if they see any spiders or flyes to kill them. And if they cannot kill them when they may be seen they are her Impes.” This seems to have impressed the general imagination, and there are various literary allusions to the watching, as in Shadwell’s A True Widow, produced at Dorset Garden in December, 1678; 4to, 1679; V, where Theodosia says to Carlos: “I see you are resolved to watch me, to make me confess Love, as they do Witches, to make ’em own their Contracts with the Devil.” In Mrs. Behn’s The Dutch Lover, produced at Dorset Garden in February, 1672–3, I, 2, Marcel exclaims:
“There is a Knack in Love, a critical Minute:
And Women must be watcht as Witches are,
E’er they confess, and then they yield apace.”
In The City-Heiress, one of Mrs. Behn’s best comedies, produced at Dorset Garden in 1682, I, 1, Sir Anthony whispers to his nephew:
“Believe me, Charles, Women love Importunity.
Watch her close, watch her like a witch, Boy,
Till she confess the Devil in her,—Love.”
The hurrying the accused to and fro and the running one forwards and backwards about a room is obviously nothing else than a form of torture. A similar torment was officially employed in certain districts of Germany, when to extort confessions wretched criminals were kept without sleep, and this may be paralleled in other lands.
The water-ordeal was considered supremely efficacious. The witches tied with “their thumbes and great toes … acrosse” and steadied by ropes—(“a roape tyed about their middles”)—were let down into the water, it might
35
