Special effects

From The Discovery of Witchcraft, by Reginald Scot. Reproduced in Shakespeare's England (1917)

Here is illustrated a trick of the kind that may have been used occasionally on stage, as in the talking head of Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay.

To cut off one's head, and to lay it in a platter, which the jugglers call the decollation [decapitation] of John [the] Baptist.