The Witch of Edmonton
CharlasThe Globe: Shakespeare, his Contemporaries, and Context
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1Crypto-Willobie
You can watch a professional performance of this Jacobean classic online as performed by the Creation Theatre. (There is a fee for tickets.)
https://arts-mail.co.uk/1WXH-7QZI2-8C6BE80A3328882B8N02UZ921E2433FD2BE3EE/cr.asp...
Written by the professional playwrights Thomas Dekker (best known for The Shoemaker's Holiday), John Ford (best known for 'Tis Pity She's a Whore) and William Rowley (co-author of the famous play The Changeling) and performed in 1621 -- the same year as the real events upon which the play was based.
THE PLOT (borrowed from Wikipedia)
"Elizabeth Sawyer is a poor, lonely, and unfairly ostracized old woman, who turns to witchcraft after having been unjustly accused of it, having nothing left to lose. A talking devil-dog Tom appears, becoming her familiar and only friend. With Tom's help, Sawyer causes one of her neighbours to go mad and kill herself, but otherwise she does not achieve very much, since many of those around her are only too willing to sell their souls to the devil all by themselves.
The play is divided fairly rigidly into separate plots, which only occasionally intersect or overlap. Alongside the main story of Elizabeth Sawyer, the other major plotline is a domestic tragedy centering on the farmer's son Frank Thorney. Frank is secretly married to the poor but virtuous Winnifride, whom he loves and believes is pregnant with his child, but his father insists that he marry Susan, elder daughter of the wealthy farmer Old Carter. Frank weakly gives in to a bigamous marriage but then tries to flee the county with Winnifride disguised as his page. When the doting Susan follows him, he stabs her. At this point, the witch's dog Tom is present on stage and it is left ambiguous whether Frank remains a fully responsible moral agent in the act. Frank inflicts superficial wounds on himself, so that he can pretend to have been attacked, and attempts to frame Warbeck, Susan's former suitor, and Somerton, suitor of Susan's younger sister Katherine. While the kindly Katherine is nursing her supposedly incapacitated brother-in-law, however, she finds a bloodstained knife in his pocket and immediately guesses the truth, which she reveals to her father. The devil-dog is on stage again at this point, and "shrugs for joy," according to the stage direction, which suggests that he has brought about Frank's downfall.
Frank is executed for his crime at the same time as Mother Sawyer, but he, in marked contrast to her, is forgiven by all and the pregnant Winnifride is taken into the family of Old Carter. The play thus ends on a relatively happy note—Old Carter enjoins all those assembled at the execution, "So, let's every man home to Edmonton with heavy hearts, yet as merry as we can, though not as we would."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witch_of_Edmonton
https://arts-mail.co.uk/1WXH-7QZI2-8C6BE80A3328882B8N02UZ921E2433FD2BE3EE/cr.asp...
Written by the professional playwrights Thomas Dekker (best known for The Shoemaker's Holiday), John Ford (best known for 'Tis Pity She's a Whore) and William Rowley (co-author of the famous play The Changeling) and performed in 1621 -- the same year as the real events upon which the play was based.
THE PLOT (borrowed from Wikipedia)
"Elizabeth Sawyer is a poor, lonely, and unfairly ostracized old woman, who turns to witchcraft after having been unjustly accused of it, having nothing left to lose. A talking devil-dog Tom appears, becoming her familiar and only friend. With Tom's help, Sawyer causes one of her neighbours to go mad and kill herself, but otherwise she does not achieve very much, since many of those around her are only too willing to sell their souls to the devil all by themselves.
The play is divided fairly rigidly into separate plots, which only occasionally intersect or overlap. Alongside the main story of Elizabeth Sawyer, the other major plotline is a domestic tragedy centering on the farmer's son Frank Thorney. Frank is secretly married to the poor but virtuous Winnifride, whom he loves and believes is pregnant with his child, but his father insists that he marry Susan, elder daughter of the wealthy farmer Old Carter. Frank weakly gives in to a bigamous marriage but then tries to flee the county with Winnifride disguised as his page. When the doting Susan follows him, he stabs her. At this point, the witch's dog Tom is present on stage and it is left ambiguous whether Frank remains a fully responsible moral agent in the act. Frank inflicts superficial wounds on himself, so that he can pretend to have been attacked, and attempts to frame Warbeck, Susan's former suitor, and Somerton, suitor of Susan's younger sister Katherine. While the kindly Katherine is nursing her supposedly incapacitated brother-in-law, however, she finds a bloodstained knife in his pocket and immediately guesses the truth, which she reveals to her father. The devil-dog is on stage again at this point, and "shrugs for joy," according to the stage direction, which suggests that he has brought about Frank's downfall.
Frank is executed for his crime at the same time as Mother Sawyer, but he, in marked contrast to her, is forgiven by all and the pregnant Winnifride is taken into the family of Old Carter. The play thus ends on a relatively happy note—Old Carter enjoins all those assembled at the execution, "So, let's every man home to Edmonton with heavy hearts, yet as merry as we can, though not as we would."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witch_of_Edmonton
