Alice Nutter was doubtless the original of the story of which Heywood availed himself in The Late Lancashire Witches, 1634, 4to, which is frequently noticed by the writers of the 17th century—­that the wife of a Lancashire country gentleman had been detected in practising witchcraft and unlawful arts, and condemned and executed.  In that play there can be little hesitation in ascribing to Heywood the scenes in which Mr. Generous and his wife are the interlocutors, and to Broome, Heywood’s coadjutor, the subordinate and farcical portions.  It is a very unequal performance, but not destitute of those fine touches, which Heywood is never without, in the characters of English country gentlemen and the pathos of domestic tragedy.  The following scene, which I am tempted to extract, though very inferior to the noble ones in his Woman Killed by Kindness, between Mr. and Mrs. Frankford, which it somewhat resembles in character, is not unworthy of this great and truly national dramatic writer:—­

MR. GENEROUS.  WIFE.  ROBIN, a groom.

Gen. My blood is turn’d to ice, and all my vitals
Have ceas’d their working.  Dull stupidity
Surpriseth me at once, and hath arrested
That vigorous agitation, which till now
Exprest a life within me.  I, methinks,
Am a meer marble statue, and no man. 
Unweave my age, O time, to my first thread;
Let me lose fifty years, in ignorance spent;
That, being made an infant once again,
I may begin to know.  What, or where am I,
To be thus lost in wonder?

Wife. Sir.

Gen. Amazement still pursues me, how am I chang’d,
Or brought ere I can understand myself
Into this new world!

Rob. You will believe no witches?

Gen. This makes me believe all, aye, anything;
And that myself am nothing.  Prithee, Robin,
Lay me to myself open; what art thou,
Or this new transform’d creature?

Rob. I am Robin; And this your wife, my mistress.

Gen. Tell me, the earth
Shall leave its seat, and mount to kiss the moon;
Or that the moon, enamour’d of the earth,
Shall leave her sphere, to stoop to us thus low. 
What, what’s this in my hand, that at an instant
Can from a four-legg’d creature make a thing
So like a wife!

Rob. A bridle; a jugling bridle, Sir.

Gen. A bridle!  Hence, enchantment. 
A viper were more safe within my hand,
Than this charm’d engine.—­
A witch! my wife a witch! 
The more I strive to unwind
Myself from this meander, I the more
Therein am intricated.  Prithee, woman,
Art thou a witch?

Wife. It cannot be denied, I am such a curst creature.

Gen. Keep aloof: 
And do not come too near me.  O my trust;
Have I, since first I understood myself,
Been of my soul so chary, still to study
What best was for its health, to renounce all
The works of that black fiend with my best force;
And hath that serpent twined me so about,
That I must lie so often and so long
With a devil in my bosom?