Halloween Countdown Day 21: The Witch of Edmonton

[eldritchhobbit]

Congratulations to Ashley, who won the second book giveaway! Now on to the countdown...

The Witch of Edmonton is a celebrated and critically acclaimed English Jacobean play from 1621, written by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford, and still performed today. Supposedly based on real-life events that took place earlier that year in Edmonton (outside London), the play tells the story of an old woman, Elizabeth Sawyer, who is shunned by her fellow villagers. She seeks revenge on her neighbors by selling her soul to the Devil, who appears to her in the form of a black dog.

- Librivox recently released a full-cast reading of the play in audio form, available for free download here.

- The play is available for free reading in this collection online at Project Gutenberg.

- You can read a synopsis and see wonderful photos from the Royal Shakespeare Company's performance of The Witch of Edmonton in the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, two years ago here.


Source.

The whole argument of the play is this distich.

Forced marriage, murder; murder blood requires:
Reproach, revenge; revenge hell’s help desires.

- from the Prologue to The Witch of Edmonton

I love this atmospheric poster.


Source.

Comments

[jan-u-wine.livejournal.com]

....so that is who that black dog is who lives down the hall from me.

Damn. I mean...really, damn!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

ACK!!!!

On the bright side, have fun with all of your revenge quests. Sounds like you have a very effective partner, if you want him. Unless he's there to help someone else take revenge on you... \o/

Now that I think about it, ACK!!!! was probably the right response after all. ;)

[jan-u-wine.livejournal.com]

nary a revenge quest *here*, so i must be the target. As if I needed to be yet more paranoid....

(Can we get a aural-photoshop of Samwise saying, "and look, Mr. Frodo: MORE paranoia!" ?)



Ack and more ack!

Re: Halloween Countdown Day 21

[acciochocolate.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this info !W/o knowing more, it sounds like a precursor to those Jacobian revenge tragedies.

Re: Halloween Countdown Day 21

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

My pleasure! And I think you're spot on in your assessment.

[morfin.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. There's a lot of folklore in England on black dogs. I've been meaning to order this one sometime: http://www.troybooks.co.uk/black-dog-folklore.html

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that looks very interesting indeed!

We talked about this a bit in my Harry Potter course re: the folklore background of the Grim and Sirius in dog form, but not in as much depth as I would've liked.

Thanks for the great link!