The Witch and the Mandrake (Ben Jonson, "Witch's Song," Masque of Queens)
Henry Fuseli Swiss
Not on view
Fuseli etched this unsettling portrayal of a witch about to pluck a mandrake by moonlight, a plant believed to possess magical powers. Crouched on a mountain top, the cloaked, bare-breasted hag reaches hungrily towards a tiny leaf-crowned form. Lines by Ben Jonson in the "Masque of Queens," a drama performed at the court of James I in 1609, inspired the subject. To throw the nobility of the queens into relief, the poet added a coven of witches, one of whom declares, "I last night lay all alone / On the ground, to hear the mandrake groan; / And plucked him up, though he grew full low, / And, as I had done, the cock did crow."
