Word: witchingly
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...chord. Miss Thompson is, quite simply, the best musical comedienne Cambridge could ever hope to have. From the first time I saw her (as a stripper in Gypsy, looking something like an eight-foot tall slutty butterfly), I knew this girl could do no wrong. As Lola, the sexiest witch of all time, she grabs more laughs than anyone (including no doubt the authors), ever knew existed in the role. Even here dancing has a certain humorous, self-mocking quality...
Hansen, naturally, does not believe that the witches had actual power derived from an alliance with the devil. His assertion instead is based on a reading of the religious, psychological and historic conditions existing at the time. Like other historians, he points out that the Salem trials were anything but unique. In the 17th century people not only still believed in witchcraft but passionately persecuted witches. There were witch burnings in Scotland and hangings in England, and on the Continent incomplete records tell of the burning of 5,000 witches in the province of Alsace alone. The learned believed...
Other cases are less clear. The Rev. George Burroughs, says Hansen, enjoyed pretending to be a witch, puffed his reputation by such tricks as overhearing conversations and then repeating them, letting his listeners assume that black magic gave him the knowledge. When the witchcraft frenzy struck Salem, this vain foolishness was remembered, and Burroughs was executed...
...other hand, Hansen says, old Bridget Bishop, whose revelations of witchcraft panicked Salem, "in all probability" was a practicing witch. That was her reputation, and apparently she had not denied it before the trials. Dolls with pins stuck in them had been found in the cellar wall of a house she had lived in. A local dyer testified that she had asked him to dye pieces of lace too small for human use-bits intended for use in image magic, Hansen thinks...
...what is popularly supposed about the Puritans is incorrect. But Hansen has done two things admirably well: he has suggested how nearly impossible it is to see another era clearly through the accretion of prejudice and the changes of time. And he has demonstrated that in the Salem witch hunt, as in many others since, it was really the people who led the leaders...