This critical edition of the biggest box-office hit of seventeenth-century France finally makes the text of the play available more easily to students and scholars The text will be of interest to anyone studying seventeenth-century French theatre or the court of Louis XIV and attitudes towards witchcraft. The introduction grounds the play in its historical context on which its extraordinary success depended, and analyses the play from a number of points of view, notably the structure and function of comedy, attitudes towards the occult, and issues related to sex and gender.