The Witch of Edmonton

by Thomas Dekker, John Ford, William Rowley

The Witch of Edmonton has received considerable attention recently both from scholars and critics interested in witchcraft practices and also from the directors in the theatre. The play, based on a sensational witchcraft trial of 1621, presents Mother Sawyer and her local community in the grip of a witch-mania reflecting popular belief and superstition of the time. This edition offers a thorough reconsideration of the text with a complete transcription of the original pamphlet by Henry Goodcole. This edition will be of particular interest not only to students of Renaissance Drama but also of the cultural history of the seventeenth century.. Open University adopted text (for their new Renaissance Drama module).

Genres: Plays, Classics, Drama, School, Fiction, Theatre, Renaissance

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1658

About the author

Thomas Dekker (c.1572 - 1632) was an Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, a versatile and prolific writer whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists.

Reviews

[lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

i just think that cuddy banks is the best name ever

[Jessica Foster · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
A very easy to read early modern play that considers ideas of gender and scapegoating via the witch trials. I mean this is no Shakespearean language and there is minimal character development but maybe this one just gets my high mark for its challenge of authoritative (male) power to subjectify and subjugate women as witches or as beholden to labels. The witch here, Elizabeth Sawyer, was a real woman trialled and hanged. In the back of my edition there is the pamphlet from her trial and it details this sad demise of a woman, here interviewed, just saying whatever about her deals with the devil to appease these people but doomed either way. In this play, however, this silenced woman is given a voice. She's feisty and vocal about accusations against her!

I also found the devil, a black dog, hilarious. And Young Banks, trying to convince him of another profession other than devilry very cute - go work for a butcher, he implores, there's still time to do good! There's a scene where a polygamist accuses his unwitting second wife of being a whore and the cognitive dissonance as highlighted by this play is just astounding. Unlike Elizabeth (whose only crimes of old age, and lack of a husband to control her), his wife is a 'good wife', convinced that it is a GOOD thing her husband is killing her lest she continue in adultery! She's a complete martyr and pushover and he thinks that he HAS to kill her: it's her fault, she's pushed him to it. Bonkers. That kind of scapegating of women is still relevant. The real transcript in the back are haunting. The structure is odd, though, I'll admit: two different streams of plot only sort of intertwining in the end.

[Sonia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this 1621 play from a few of my favourite guys, but I thought it was going to be a little richer than it was... There's still plenty to interest: the sympathetic portrayal of Elizabeth Sawyer, ostracized by her small community, and the wonderful role of the black devil-dog that becomes her familiar are highlights. The parallel plot featuring Frank Thorney - a young man pressured by his father to marry for money, later a bigamist and a murderer poses the question of how much influence the devil really had in these events.

It's wonderful to see this play making its way into digital theatre in March 2022 and I can't wait to see what Creation Theatre will make of this (online performances 5-20 Mar 2022, times are for the UK): https://creationtheatre.co.uk/the-wit...

[bri]

I have not seen the word "Bow-wow" written out in earnest since I was probably five years old.

This was a decently fun tragicomedy and I would absolutely love to see this staged–it would be such a fucking blast if treated as the campy piece it's meant to be.

In terms of rhetoric: I really enjoyed and was frankly impressed by the way this play confronts the construction of biases in the system of witch hunts–who gets labelled as a witch and who gets condemned as a witch. I was not really expecting it to go that hard with the social commentary. Very convenient as a historical account of the early modern view of witches! Thanks guys!

As a piece of entertainment, oh boy am I obsessed with this little slippery prankster demon Dog. He felt like a cool and dark twist on the fool archetype mixed with Puck from Midsummer and he just was such a delicious character. I can only imagine how much of a joy he would be to play. I want him to be in every play actually.

I do wish the actual witch of Edmonton herself had more to do with the main events of the story; she seemed to kind of exist to rant about misogyny and class (and eloquently so, but) or to justify the presence of the Dog, and I think she should've been allowed to have some fun in the plot, goddamnit!

[Simona B]

“Is the name of witch so pleasing to thine ear?”

It is wonderful the range of interpretations this play is open to. I would love to see it on stage.

[Jemma Forster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the talking doggy

[vic · Rating 1 out of 5]

local men are horrible people and get all the forgiveness while old woman gets blamed for everything bad that happened, ever. no, thank you

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were a lot of connotations of beastiality in this that I did not enjoy. The characters are also very annoying. Just because thy cattle is dead does not mean your witchy next door neighbor killed it. Lots of better English plays to read out there. If I read this play during my freshman fall, I would’ve immediately dropped my English major. However, if you forget about the weird sexual aspects of this play, I think there is a lot to appreciate about themes of solitude, morality, and fate vs free will.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was another play text I bought because it was one of the plays Beatrix Lehmann was in. She performed as Winifred in the 1936 performance of the play at the Old Vic. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. The play was written in 1621, the same year the actual "Witch of Edmonton" was executed for being a witch. This version of the play had a good basic introduction to the history of witchcraft trials in the UK, as well as analysis of the play and some details of it's past performances. (It makes references to well known actors playing lesser roles including the 1936 production which mentions the character Beatrix plays but not her name). It also includes an original reproduction of the actual court case and "confession" which was very interesting to contrast with the play.

The play I thought was very good. There was an awful lot being said about gender, social conditions and poverty in this play. I liked that they made the witch a sympathetic character who was driven to the pact with the devil due to harsh treatment and poverty. People accused her of being a witch before she tried to become one. This was counterbalanced with the story of the man who married two women, and seemed the most dastardly of the piece and yet also having to conform to social conventions that harmed him. It was interesting to see that the witch wasn't powerful, that the devil wouldn't perform the deeds for her that she wanted. The fact that he existed seemed to be part of the culture at the time but he was in fact quite a powerless devil. (Albeit he may have been responsible for a death). But I also liked the fact that there was a lot of ambiguity in the play as to who was ultimately responsible.

Reading this I thought it would be fascinating to see on stage. As I was reading it I saw the RSC are currently doing a production which sounded amazing, but unfortunately it's only on till the end of November in Stratford so I won't be able to get to see it. Here's hoping for a London transfer.

[Liz Padrnos · Rating 4 out of 5]

broke. my. heart.

“And why on me? Why should the envious world / Throw all their scandalous malice upon me? /
‘Cause I am poor, deformed and ignorant, / And like a bow buckled and bent together / By some more strong in mischiefs than myself, / Must I for that be made a common sink / For all the filth and rubbish of men’s tongues / To fall and run into? Some call me witch, / And, being ignorant of myself, they go / About to teach me how to be one, urging / That my bad tongue, by their bad usage made so, / Forspeaks their cattle, doth bewitch their corn, / Themselves, their servants and their babes at nurse. / This they enforce upon me, and in part / Make me to credit it.”

[Abby Omlor · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 out of 5 Stars

Eh.

[Sibila Pirih]

By no means a masterpiece, but I had a blast. It is much more silly than one would think.

Also, shout out to the most relatable idiot, my man Cuddy Banks, who is willing to put his life on the line for a random dog he met a few hours ago. We’ve all been there.

[kaya :) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dog: Bow, wow, wow, wow!

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why was this mostly about people other than the witch

[Grace Belby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love you liz x

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jacobean dramatists loved portraying witches on stage. This was partly a reflection of the political climate at the time. The king had written a famous pamphlet on demonology, so witch plays were a good way to court royal favour, and to cash in on the fashionable issue of the age.

The subject matter was also popular with audiences. It still is. Why else would I have bought a book of three Jacobean plays about witchcraft? Of course nowadays our attitude towards witches has moved towards sympathy with the witch, but we still enjoy a good evil witch from time to time.

Witches were also useful from an aesthetic point of view. The vile practices of witchcraft provided a metaphor for the evil intrigues of the rich and powerful, and also the darker side lurking in every human heart.

One thing all the (male) playwrights agreed was that witches were a real thing, and that they were evil. The witches are ugly twisted creatures, hardly women at all (in Macbeth they have beards). Their schemes are mostly designed to corrupt others, and they are in league with the devil.

What makes The Witch of Edmonton intriguing is that we have a witch who is for once largely sympathetic, even though the play is based on a real-life case where a woman was hanged for witchcraft.

Elizabeth Sawyer may seem at first glance to be the typical hag of witchcraft mythology. She is elderly, ugly, poor, disabled and has a curst manner. (Quite a number of women who were tried as witches were similarly known for having a sharp tongue. Heaven forfend that any woman should speak up for herself!)

As far as the townsfolk are concerned, Mother Sawyer is a witch, and she is persecuted, taunted and beaten for her alleged crime. In fact the unhappy lady is not a witch at the start of the play, but becomes one as a result of her mistreatment by the locals.

A devil appears to Mother Sawyer in the form of a dog. This dog, possibly difficult to convincingly portray on stage, is a splendid comic character, shrewdly mocking and manipulating the people of the town, but untouchable since it is an other-worldly spirit.

It is Mother Sawyer’s vindictive attitude towards those who have wronged her which brings the devil to her. Her actions in forming a league with the devil and inviting terrible things on her neighbours may be appalling, but we can understand it. Since the dog threatens to tear her to pieces if she does not sign away her soul and body, and since Mother Sawyer has no reason to feel love of her tormentors, her corruption is assured.

Indeed the dog exists as a metaphor for our evil thoughts. When we stray from the moral path, then we let the devil into our life, the playwrights seem to be saying. This is reflected in the play’s main plot.

Frank Thorney has married the maid of his employer, Sir Arthur Clarington, because she is pregnant. Unknown to him, Sir Arthur has already deflowered Winifred, and there may be some doubt about the parentage of her child. While Winifred deceives Frank until the last, she does renounce her affair with Sir Arthur, and agrees to remain faithful to Frank.

If the play seems sympathetic towards a woman hated by society, we must also note its sympathy towards the fallen woman, Winifred. She is the most upright character in the play, following her early dalliance. She is loyal to Frank, but is willing to expose his actions for the good of others.

Frank cannot admit to his marriage, because his father, Old Thorney, wants him to marry a wealthier woman. Indeed the family’s financial difficulties depend so heavily on this marriage that Frank is forced to commit bigamy by marrying Susan Carter for her dowry.

Whether or not we have a modicum of sympathy for the weak-natured Frank’s predicament, matters take a darker turn when the dog influences Frank to murder Susan after he has got her money.

What are we to make of this turn of events? Is Frank culpable for the crime or under the influence of the devil? Is the devil merely tapping into hidden evil desires in Frank’s own heart?

Frank must pay the price for his crime, but the play is somewhat easy on him. His punishment is tragic but it is attended by forgiveness from all the people that he has wronged. His fate is grieved by the townsfolk.

This is in contrast to Mother Sawyer, whose repentance is less than complete, and whose punishment is accepted by her victims as an act of justice. Of course her actions are worse than those of Frank, but we have seen enough of her plight to supply the pity for Mother Sawyer that the other characters cannot feel.

A curious tonic for the wickedness of the other characters comes from Cuddy Banks, a doltish young man who befriends the dog, and yet somehow fails to be corrupted by it. The dog certainly makes a fool of Cuddy. His attempts to court a woman are used to perform pranks at his expense.

An innocent Morris dancing ritual (a model for order and harmony) is disrupted by the work of the dog acting on behalf of Cuddy.

Nonetheless Cuddy treats the dog as a dog, rather than as a devil, thereby remaining pure albeit an embodiment of purer stupidity. At the end he is continuing to treat the devil as a dog, and suggesting the dog finds a new career working for a butcher.

It was not uncommon for plays to be works of collaboration in those days, and this play has a wealth of talent behind it, with William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford all having worked on it. (For good measure, after the three writers’ names, the title page adds ‘&C’ hinting that there might be even more writers.)

Too many writers is never a good thing, as the vision of any one writer is lost in the collaboration, all the more so when there are more than two writers. Nonetheless, despite the dilution of so many writers, The Witch of Edmonton holds together surprisingly well, mixing comedy and tragedy to good effect.

It is also one of the few Jacobean witchcraft plays that comes closer to expressing the view of witches that we now hold today, even if the play moves away from this in its later scenes.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought Elizabeth Sawyer (the eponymous witch) had some excellent speeches. I think the portrayal of her transformation from an isolated old woman who is suspected of witchcraft, into an actual witch that seems to communicate with the Devil was really well-written and interesting. However, 'The Witch of Edmonton' suffers as a whole from forced, jarring plot points such as Frank's abrupt, unquestioning murder of his second wife, Susan. I also found Susan's meek acceptance of her imminent death utterly ridiculous. The fact that the play is based on the true story of a woman who was hanged for practicing witchcraft does add an interesting dimension, but I feel like this is more due to the circumstances of the case than to the authors.

[Ela · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Some call me a witch.
And, being ignorant of myself, they go
About to teach me how to become one'

A very dramatic play, full of love, murder and witchcraft but firmly situated within a realistic Elizabethan society. The dichotomy of the ordinary and the supernatural makes for an engaging read, I would love to see this performed.

[Jordan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not a fan! Other than the talking devil-dog this was pretty hard going.
Might have a change of rating after studying it in a few weeks time - but at the moment it's not looking hopeful!

[Elisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1621, in the midst of dozens of witchcraft trials taking place in England, “The Witch of Edmonton” provides a fascinating insight into the happenings. The play is inspired by a true event, but beyond the main character’s name, Mother [Elizabeth] Sawyer, it bears little in common with its real-world counterpart. Instead of trying to stick to facts, the authors, Dekker, Ford and Rowley, choose to utilize their tragic-comedy as a forum for commentating about various societal and religious beliefs of the period. The main way they accomplish this is through their use of two parallel plotlines detailing the exploits of Mother Sawyer and the character Frank Thorney. In both stories, there is a representation of the criminal behavior that can result from lack of money and the overwhelming burden of social pressure. This pressure is complicated further by an intervention of the Devil, who deceives the characters into committing horrendous crimes.
Thorney is meant to serve as a warning to the reader about the power of the devil’s influence over one’s soul. Although noone would question the devil’s ability to tempt an old Crone such as Mother Sawyer, it is harder to imagine Thorney, an upstanding citizen, being just as easily coerced. In the seventeenth century, society viewed the devil as holding a very real place in their lives. Danger and sin were lurking around every corner and if one was not careful, it could be very easy to fall prey. By opening themselves up to sin, Thorney and Sawyer become his victims and serve as warnings to the rest of society.

Initially, Thorney’s sin is born of overwhelming outside social pressure. Upon finding out that his mistress, Winnifrede is pregnant, Thorney makes the decision to secretly marry. It is shortly after this, however, that Thorney’s father makes a speech threatening Thorney that if he does not marry the wealthy Susan Carter, his inheritance will be null. Thorney concedes to the threat in the name of maintaining peace. The message is clear to the reader that even small sins can easily lead to much larger ones, and that if Thorney had chosen to avoid sin from the beginning, he would not have been put in the position of becoming a pawn for the devil later on.

The same can be said of the main character, Mother Sawyer. In the beginning of the story, she is portrayed much as an innocent. Because of her deformed appearance she is rejected by society and horribly harassed. She is forced to endure abuse from her neighbors in many forms including the burning of her own thatch roof, a “test” the villagers perform to determine her status as a witch. When she can take it no more, Sawyer succumbs to the village’s opinion of her and begins to actively play the part of a witch. It is at this point that the devil dog intercedes and Sawyer agrees to sell her soul. Like Thorney, Sawyer begins with a small sin (cursing) which becomes the gateway for much more serious offenses. It is at this point though, that the two stories diverge and the playwrights’ intentions are called into question.

Besides the intervention of the devil in both Mother Sawyer and Frank Thorney’s lives, and their mutual subjectivity to intense social pressure, the two characters’ situations bear little resemblance to one another. Thorney’s case overall exudes a much more psychological nature. However, as previously mentioned, Mother Sawyer begins the story as an innocent or and the devil dog only introduces himself to her after she has come to the realization that no matter the balance of good and evil within her, she will be viewed the same by the larger community.

[Michelle Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely more of a 3.5 than 4 stars overall, but Tom the devil-dog makes the play for me!

Tom’s character (and speaking role, no less) raise important questions about the role of agency in evil acts associated with the occult: a) re: the agency of the “witches” who call Tom and his ilk “familiars” and b) the agency of these shapeshifting familiars themselves, who seem to be instructed (inhabited by?) demons rather than intrinsically demonic.

Cuddy Banks’s suggestion that Tom find a respectable role, such as a turnspit in a gentleman’s house where meat is only eaten once or twice a week, emphasizes Tom’s agency in choosing another kind of life for himself; but at the same time, the suggestion comes from the play’s clown calls its feasibility into question. As is often the case when it comes to clowns in English drama of the period, we are left wondering if Cuddy (or those like him) is vastly underestimating or misunderstanding the situation at hand, or if he is actually the wisest character in the Dramatis Personae.

Cuddy’s suggestion remains: can a demon-dog repent like a reformed prostitute and live another life as a respectable working dog and/or companion animal? To what extent can we separate the desire to do evil from the act of waving the wand? With so many possibilities for others to blame, how do we determine how much weight one person’s (or animal’s) inequities carry? This so-called “repentance play” has a habit of skating past its own attempted morals and raising more questions than it answers—or rather, than it answers satisfactorily. (For this reason I look forward to teaching it in a future iteration of my Literature and the Occult course.)

Tom has much to offer for both broad discussions surrounding the means by which animals become the conduits of Satan and the more local discussion about (evil) black dog legends in England. From the story of the snake in Genesis to Milton’s take on the snake in /Paradise Lost/; from the Gytrash of /Jane Eyre/ to Padfoot and the Grim in /Harry Potter/; this highly-readable (and dare I say, teachable) play is bursting at the seams with possibilities for connections to other disciplines, texts, and cultural phenomenon.

[Arthur Cravan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't really expect to read this whole thing... but it's a quick read, an easy one, & honestly, I found it pretty hilarious at times. I was nudged toward it by Virgina Woolf's essay "Notes on an Elizabethan Play" (published 1925 in her The Common Reader, maybe earlier in the TLS or something), which quoted the lines

All life is but a wandering to find home;
When we’re gone, we’re there.

(unattributed, as with all her other quotes in the essay... kinda annoying, but at least these days we have Google.)

So, armed with that quote, & one or two from George Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois, I set out to read me some Elizabethan plays. Which, the literal moment before reading that essay, would have been such a laughably unlikely for me to set out to do.

But I had a really surprising amount of fun with this. It's almost always simple enough to understand without looking words up (& the version I had - edited by Ernest Rhys - had a useful though rather minimal supply of annotations to help with some of the real oddities), the story itself is fine (very typical, as far as I can tell, of such witchcraft tales), & I laughed out loud plenty. Not too mention some very interesting & beautiful phrasing that just seemed to fall from the dramatists of the time.

My favourite scene was where Tom - the black devil-dog - nearly drowns lovable ol' Cuddy. Cuddy survives this, comes to tell the dog off a bit (I think?), & the dog starts talking to him. This takes him aback for a split second, but then he starts talking with the dog, & instantly strikes up a relationship with alarmingly deep roots. Within a page or two, Cuddy asks the dog to fistbump him (I am not kidding) twice (I am not kidding):
Well, Tom, give me thy fist, we are friends; you shall be mine ingle: I love you; but I pray you let’s have no more of these ducking devices.

Ah, Cuddy. We love you, too.

[Veru · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this quite an interesting play. I have to admit that I had not clear expectations going in (apart from there probably being a witch) and it did not at all turn out in a way that I could have anticipated (which is always refreshing). For one, when Frank and Winifred had that conversation about constancy in the beginning, I first thought this was going to be a Two Gentlemen of Verona-esque tale of Frank falling in love with another woman. Similarly, when it turned out that Sir Arthur and Winifred had had an affair, I thought it might have a Troilus and Cressida-like twist and would involve an actual (not only alleged) inconstant woman. It was neither of that and therefore so much better.

It didn’t necessarily follow the general structure for tragedies, in fact it was very different from every tragedy I have ever read (can you even call it a tragedy? there are deaths, but it does not give me a tragedy vibe at all). Some moments that I found particularly interesting were the scene in which Susan and Winifred meet and the intense dramatic irony present in their dialogue throughout. Sawyer’s plotline, on the other hand, constantly made me feel of modern movies in which a bully fights back, but essentially turns villain. I found her a surprisingly sympathetic character.

I have also noted down some characteristics present in this play, which I found quite unusual for the early modern stage, but I will keep them to myself at this point, because I am not sure whether they truly are unusual or whether I have simply read too few plays to make an informed comment about them (and I don’t want to accidentally embarrass myself).

As with most early modern plays that I have read, I would love to see this one performed sometime!

[Mac · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Witch of Edmonton" was the next play covered in my online course about early modern English theater. It was very interesting in its portrayal of the title character (apparently based on a real case contemporary with the play's writing in 1621). She essentially states that she was forced into witchcraft because her neighbors accused her of being a witch already. This seems like an adept depiction of the mania about witchcraft in 17th-century England and its colonies. People found witches because they wanted to find witches. However, Mother Sawyer, the witch of Edmonton, is shown actually carrying out nefarious deeds with the help of the devil in the form of a talking dog. One has to assume that some of these scenes were played for laughs.

If the scenes with Mother Sawyer were the main part of the play, it could have been quite powerful. However, her story is at best a subplot. The main storyline follows a man who has been forced to marry two different women, one to appease his landlord and the other to enable his father to get out of debt. The only connection between the two stories is that he also has dealings with the talking dog, who inspires him to kill his second wife. There are also scenes involving morris dancing, only tangentially connected with the two main plot lines.

"The Witch of Edmonton" has three credited authors, and I am tempted to blame the lack of a unified voice for the scattershot nature of the play. But collaborative authorship was evidently quite common in this era of theater; scholars believe that many of Shakespeare's plays were written with a co-author. Whatever the reason, the play struck me as a bit of a mess, though it contains within it some really good material.

[Annabel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a well known historical phenomenon that thousands of women were burnt after being accused of being witches in early modern Europe. The stage seems to have provided an outlet for public anxieties about witchcraft.

Inspired by the 1621 witch trial of Elizabeth Sawyer, The Witch Of Edmonton by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford fundamentally exposes the attitudes surrounding the injustice for the poor and oppressed, providing psychological studies in such characters.

The village community of Edmonton feels threatened by two misfits, Elizabeth Sawyer, who has turned to the devil to ald her against her unfeeling neighbours, and Frank, who refuses to marry the woman of his father's choice and ends up murdering her.

But funnily enough, for a play that should be discussing witches and its contemporary intrigue in witches, it was mostly about other people, and not the witch at all?? The sole thread linking these plots is the Devil himself - to which I did giggle at the fact that the talking dog is the Devil itself, but that's besides the point - I guess you can say that the crime of witchcraft is consistently contextualised within a much broader landscape.

The Witch Of Edmonton does a good job in highlighting how contemporary presentation of village life and witchcraft!!

[Gwen :) · Rating 4 out of 5]

✰✰✰✰.5 / 5
Text read alongside the full-production audiobook by LibriVox

A really interesting look at the witchcraft trials of the 1620s, this play displays a very compassionate view of witchcraft for the time period. To be a ‘witch’ isn’t something practiced, rather a label thrust upon those ostracized in society. The character of Elizabeth Sawyer perfect encapsulates the usual victim of a witchcraft accusation — an old, poor woman on the outskirts of society. Of course, there are many exceptions to this ‘definition’ of a witch, but I really enjoyed her meta-commentary on how turning to witchcraft/the devil became an act of acceptance and reclamation of what she’s been called.

Frank’s storyline was interesting and morally questionable, though he’s pretty starkly forgiven at the end. I think this play provides an interesting look into how witchcraft was interpreted and created in the time period, and the story itself is interesting. Definitely recommend the audiobook production!

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[Ilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A play full of ambiguities. To what extent is the titular witch created by the prejudices of her community? How much agency does she really have? She is both a scapegoat and a revenger. The play revels in the fascination with witchcraft while at the same time portraying Mother Sawyer as a victim. Both her and Frank Thorney are pressured into doing evil by the fraught economic circumstances they find themselves in. Both get sent to the gallows, but while Mother Sawyer goes out cursing, Frank is penitent – a slightly heavy-handed insistence by the dramatists on the importance of forgiveness. The most ambiguous character of all is of course the satanic talking dog, who either inspires or encourages the chaos that engulfs Edmonton. In the end he is beaten an away by the good-natured simpleton Cuddy Banks – a Bottom-like figure who consorts with demons but can’t be corrupted by them. It is another one of the play’s ironies that the most heroic character is the clown.

[Daisy May Twizell · Rating 3 out of 5]

For pleasure, not my favourite thing. But from a scholarly perspective this text is very interesting.

The text threads three different interactions the devil has in Edmonton: the successful conversion of Elizabeth Sawyer, the subtle manipulation of Frank Thorney, and the sheer refusal of Cuddy Banks. There is a nice interplay between its dark moral questioning and its lighter moments of humour, creating a very interesting debate about the threat of the devil. It also has interesting historical context through the real story of Elizabeth Sawyer, which adds another intellectual layer to the text.

It is still worth considering, however, that this is an old text. It doesn't quite fit into modern story-telling, and it is severely harmed by the fact that the devil isn't as rampant a fear in society now.

[Katelynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this! Easy to read in my opinion (in comparison to other plays of the time). There is an interesting contrast between the more realistic aspects of the play and then the more supernatural or otherworldly (such as Tom, the talking dog). A lot of adultery lol, which I love to see in these sorts of plays.

The "witch" in this play is actually based on the real-life woman Elizabeth Sawyer, who was put to death in the 17th century for being a witch. So if you're looking for a more in-depth read of this play, you could look into her and compare and contrast the differences and similarities.

Overall, I would say that if you happen to be into witches, you're looking for a good play that is easy enough to read, or you're looking for play with some witchy historical context, then this is the play for you!

[mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Witch of Edmonton, a play co-written by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, and John Ford in 1621, is an early modern tragedy about social alienation, superstition, and moral ambiguity.

The play revolves around Elizabeth Sawyer, a woman shunned by her neighbors and accused of witchcraft. The story also talks about a troubled love triangle and the betrayal of Susan, who falls victim to social and moral corruption.

One of the play’s most interesting aspects is its exploration of the scapegoating of marginalized individuals, particularly women. We also have the talking dog, who is a manifestation of the Devil and feels less like a symbol of horror and more like a catalyst for the evil of people and it shows the absurd lengths to which people will go to explain their failings.

It is a quick read, perfect for the upcoming month of October!