The Witch of Edmonton
Written early in the 17th century by three of Shakespeare´s contemporaries, Thomas Dekker, John Ford and William Rowley, this play deals with many interesting issues - love, money, gender disguises, revenge, forgiveness, witchcraft and evil, which, as we see in the play lurks in the heart of man. In this essay I am not going to deal with all the above mentioned themes. It is the character of witch and witchcraft craze I´ll be interested in. The title character of the play is Mother Sawyer, a lonely, feeble old woman, in her own words "poor, deformed and ignorant", who is used as a scapegoat by the villagers of Edmonton for all their woes, and is believed to be a witch even though she is not. In revenge, Mother Sawyer calls on the Devil for a Faustian pact in which she is given magical power. She has some fun getting her revenge on the villagers, but ultimately the Devil betrays her, and she is to be executed. The play is by no means a modern, materialistic analysis of witchcraft, but it is unique in highlighting the scapegoating phenomena as a cause of witchcraft, rather than as a justified response to it.And being ignorant of my self, they goAbout to teach me how to be one, urgi
And that instantly, And seal it with thy blood: if thou deniest,I´ll tear thy body in a thousand pieces. Their speeches are examples of a typical manipulation of a witch trial in order to achieve a capital conviction on the basis of a confessed pact with the devil. It was much easier to elicit a confession of a pact with the devil and thus disloyalty to God, than it was to prove maleficium. (Act 2, Scene 1) Although Sawyer is responsible for calling on the Devil, she is forced into the compact on threat of being torn "in a thousand pieces. Nevertheless, her relationship with the Dog is the only loving relationship the old lady had ever had. For her, there was no more charity, no more love, no more humanity in the humans aroundg her than there was in a fiend from the pit. She clearly suffers from abject poverty, yet Old Banks will not even let her gather sticks from his land. In her desperate state, Sawyer wishes for the power of witchcraft to get her revenge:I´m now ignorant: would some power good or badInstruct me which way I might be reveng´dUpon this Churl,. But as the Dog reminds us at the conclusion, the temptation to evil always lurks on your shoulder, whispering in your ear. The Man of Law Whose honeyed hopes the credulous Client draws,.
Common topics in this essay:
Thy Trial,
Mother Sawyer,
Sir Arthur,
Witch Edmonton,
II Scene,
Body Dog,
Mother Sawyer´s,
Devil Faustian,
Agnes Ratcliffe,
William Rowley,
pact devil,
sir arthur,
mother sawyer,
demonic pact,
justice sir,
death sentence,
scene 1,
mother sawyer´s,
justice sir arthur,
ford rowley,
demonic influence,
sir arthur´s hidden,
dekker ford rowley,
arthur´s hidden sin,
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Acceptance Essays
