THE BEST PLAYS OF THE OLD DRAMATISTS.

The Late Lancashire Witches and the Wise Woman of Hogsdon are comedies of English life, without that element of romantic interest which Heywood usually added to the domestic drama. The plot of the latter play turns upon the quackeries and impostures of a professed fortune-teller; but to mention it in the same breath with Jonson’s Alchemist would be ridiculous. The Lancashire Witches, though it attempts, in one scene at least, to touch the deeper interest of witchcraft, deals for the most part only with the vulgar and farcical aspects of the subject.