This project examines how early modern stage technologies were implemented in the portrayal of stage witches, wizards, and devils and how these representations both validated and critiqued popular religious beliefs. It is for this reason that the dissertation focuses itself around the topics of Renaissance theater architecture, dramatic text, and religious ideology. By merging these subject areas together, I answer the following: How can we put our knowledge of early modern theater spaces into practical use while gaining a greater understanding of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in the process?

While modern theater scholars have already discussed public and private stage features at great length, my study builds upon their work by directly applying a knowledge of stage structure, mechanism, and symbolism to specific early modern dramatic texts. More can be learned about these playhouses and the play-texts performed there by answering a variety of questions that have yet to be fully answered. How did the stage's distinctive entrances and exits influence the dramas of Shakespeare and his contemporaries? When did it make sense to allow characters to enter the platform via the ceiling and platform traps? What did it mean to the audience when characters utilized certain entrances as opposed to others? To answer these questions, the dissertation firmly positions itself within the field of Performance Criticism. This is also the reason that I concentrate my argument upon characters who were expected to perform unnatural feats (i.e., stage witches, sorcerers, and devils).

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.