Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English

language.

This is Episode 168, Witches, Demons and Fairies.

In this episode, we're going to look at the Elizabethan fascination with witchcraft and

mysterious creatures like fairies, elves, and demons.

Those subjects feature prominently in the literature of the period, and they reveal a lot about

the worldview of the people who lived in England in the late 1500s.

There were great debates at the time about the world of magic and witchcraft, whether

it was good or bad, whether or not it was consistent with the teachings of the church,

and whether it even existed at all.

In this episode, we'll examine how that fascination with the supernatural shaped the

literature of Elizabethan England, and how it shaped the English language.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is history of

Englishpodcast.com, and you can sign up to support the podcast and get bonus episodes

at patreon.com slash history of English.

Now one quick note before we begin.

As you may have noticed, this is a very long episode, much longer than normal.

And that's because there's a lot of information to cover.

But I've chosen to maintain the discussion as a single episode because there's a common

theme that runs through all of it.

So given the length of the episode, I've structured it a little bit differently than normal.

This is a story told in five parts, each of which is presented as a separate segment

...