The Witch of Edmonton

The play—"probably the most sophisticated treatment of domestic tragedy in the whole of Elizabethan-Jacobean drama"[1]—is based on events that supposedly took place in the parish of Edmonton, then outside London, earlier that year.

The play depicts Elizabeth Sawyer, an old woman shunned by her neighbours, who gets revenge by selling her soul to the Devil, who appears to her in the shape of a black dog called Tom.

In this retelling, Elizabeth Sawyer's storyline took centre stage: the Frank plot was removed and replaced by bits of new writing and theatrical portions of Henry Goodcole's pamphlet.

The performance was a staged reading of a text adapted by John Richardson to include references to the history and contemporary landmarks of the Canadian Edmonton.

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.

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.

Secondly, the village's voice of authority, the lord of the manor Sir Arthur Clarington, is represented as untrustworthy, and Mother Sawyer utters a lengthy tirade indicting his lechery (he has previously had an affair with Winnifride, which she now repents) and general corruption, a charge which the play as a whole supports.