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what was the importtance of supestitions in shakespeares time?

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t-kay | 06:05 Tue 22nd Jun 2010 | Arts & Literature
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Were they?
Homework again?
Depends on how deep you need to take your answer.
Most people at that time had religious belief and magical folklore embedded in their upbringing. They probably made little real distinction between a Christian prayer and bowing to the fairies at the start of a bridge - it was all simply what you did.
King James I of England definitely believed in magic and witchcraft and published a book on how to identify a witch. He was personally very superstitious, but then you need to know he had several attempts on his life, even when he was quite young, so was probably right to be careful.
This list shows the number of people put on trial for withcraft and the date of their trial:
http://www.cleo.net.u...istory%2Fpendlewit%2F
This gives a bit of a measurable insight into how much people believed in magic and superstition. Notice that there is a really big rise in numbers of women accused of witchcraft in the 1600's, when the Protestant version of Christianity was strictly imposed on the population. This had the effect of making people afraid of using counter-spells to ward off bad magic - so they were more likely to accuse an enemyof witchcraft if they had cursed them in a traditional way.

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