The Merry Devil of Edmonton — Context and Discussion

From Necromancer's Chamber to Forest Chase

The play's movement between settings is abrupt and purposeful. The Induction confines Fabell to his bedroom, where the spirit Coreb appears amid "distemperd and tempestuous night." By Act IV, the scene shifts to Enfield Chase, an open forest where the Host Blague rallies his companions with martial bluster: "we are once more come under the zona torrida of the forest." The contrast is stark—from a single, candlelit room to a sprawling woodland where characters can hide, pursue, and blunder. This spatial expansion mirrors the plot's shift from a single character's supernatural deadline to a collective, physical chase. The forest becomes a space of comic disorder, where Smug the Smith boasts of his drunken exploits and the Host invokes the "good Duke of Norfolk" as a figure of authority. The play thus uses setting to modulate tone, moving from horror to farce through a change in locale.

Recurring Images of Binding and Release

Throughout the excerpts, images of confinement and liberation recur. Fabell is bound by his compact with Coreb, who comes to "claim my due." The spirit's language of debt and expiration—"this the hour my date expires"—frames Fabell's situation as a contractual trap. In contrast, the abduction plot revolves around freeing Millisent from the nunnery. Raymond Mountchensey, disguised as a friar, tells her to "bestow your self / Here in the walk near to the willow ground" so he can "convey you hence." The nunnery is itself a form of enclosure, and the lovers' plan is a literal escape. Fabell, despite his own bondage, becomes the agent of others' release, boasting that "the wench is ours before to-morrow day." The play thus sets two kinds of binding against each other: the supernatural chain that threatens Fabell and the social or religious constraints that confine Millisent. Both are resolved through trickery and movement.

The Scholar as Stage Manager

Fabell's role in the excerpts is less that of a protagonist than a plot engineer. After the Induction, he quickly takes charge of the abduction scheme, instructing the younger men: "Be ready but to take her at our hands, / Leave us to scamble for her getting out." He speaks in imperative, coordinating phrases—"About our business!"—and his magic is invoked as a cover story. Raymond tells the others that Fabell is "a Necromancer and a Conjurer / That works for young Mountchensey altogether." Yet Fabell himself does not perform any visible magic after the Induction; instead, he relies on disguise and timing. The play thus presents him as a figure of ambiguous power: he can command spirits but chooses to orchestrate a human comedy. This structural choice keeps the supernatural threat in the background while foregrounding the practical, almost theatrical, management of the elopement. Fabell's authority comes from his knowledge of both magic and human nature.

Comic Counterpoint: The Host and the Smith

The excerpts introduce a secondary strand of comedy through the Host Blague and Smug the Smith. Their dialogue in Enfield Chase is full of mock-heroic language and physical humor. Blague calls his companions "Hungarian pilchers" and urges them to be resolute, while Smug recalls being "drunk i' thy house twenty times and ten." This low-comedy pair provides a foil to the romantic plot: where Raymond and Millisent speak of love and pilgrimage, Smug talks of ale and fighting. The Host's invocation of the "zona torrida" and the "good Duke of Norfolk" parodies the elevated rhetoric of adventure. Their presence also reinforces the play's interest in movement and disguise—they are poachers or outlaws in the forest, operating outside social norms. This subplot does not directly advance the abduction, but it thickens the play's texture, offering a rougher, more physical version of the freedom that the lovers seek. The structure thus alternates between romantic intrigue and rustic farce.

Readers approaching The Merry Devil of Edmonton should attend to how the play balances its supernatural premise with its comic execution. The Induction's dark magic gives way to a plot driven by human ingenuity, not diabolical intervention. The recurring imagery of binding—contracts, vows, enclosures—creates a coherent thematic thread across scenes. The play rewards attention to its structural shifts, particularly the movement from interior to forest, and to the way Fabell functions as a master of ceremonies rather than a tormented Faust figure. These elements suggest a work more interested in theatrical contrivance than in moral or metaphysical exploration.

I’ve always found that first scene in The Merry Devil of Edmonton—the quiet arithmetic of a soul traded, then the forest’s sudden openness—lingers like a half-remembered key. It shares a shelf-sibling with The Critic and the Drama — Reading Companion, which understands such shifts as breathing, not breaking. We recline, hold both, and feel the same warm hinge between cage and clearing.