SOURCE: Atkinson, David. “Moral Knowledge and the Double Action in The Witch of Edmonton.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 25, No. 2 (Spring, 1985): 419-37.

[In the following essay, Atkinson asserts that the theme of moral knowledge serves to unite the seemingly disconnected Mother Sawyer and Frank Thorney plots in The Witch of Edmonton.]

A familiar view of The Witch of Edmonton by Dekker, Ford, and Rowley is that the play was written hastily in order to cash in on the topicality of the witchcraft material and that little effort was made to integrate this with the Frank Thorney plot.¹ A study which praises the main plot as “probably the most sophisticated treatment of domestic tragedy in the whole of the Elizabethan-Jacobean drama” simultaneously dismisses the sub-plot as sketchy and largely unrelated.² Edward Sackville West, in his seminal essay on the play, gives a more detailed reason for doubting the unity of The Witch of Edmonton:

While in the theatre the interest and excitement of the play is marvellously sustained, so that we do not care to notice the points at which the double action fails to amalgamate, outside it we must admit that the stories of Frank Thorney and of the witch herself are not properly integrated. We can, if we like, argue that the Dog acts as a sufficient binding force; but I do not think this argument holds, for the reason that that figure is made to do (since the stage is after all a simplifying medium) for two different devils: the revenge-lust of the witch and the self-destructiveness of Frank.³

Besides the Dog there are few characters who function in both plots. Nevertheless, a claim can still be made for a greater degree of thematic coherence in the play than has hitherto been allowed.⁴ Unity is given to the double action of The Witch of Edmonton by the theme of moral knowledge, or the knowledge of good and evil. Initially Frank Thorney and Mother Sawyer, the witch, are hardly to be thought of as especially virtuous people, but neither are they intentionally wicked; in fact they show little consciousness of the difference between right and wrong. Yet during the course of the play both of these characters become aware of that distinction, and this gives rise to a division within the personality of each of them. It is only then that they are drawn into irrevocable evil, resulting in catastrophe in both cases, but also bringing about repentance. These two lines of action parallel one another, although the treatment is considerably more detailed in the main plot. In addition, the plots complement each other in two different ways. In the first place, Frank Thorney specifically encounters the goodness of Susan Carter which makes a profound impression upon him, whereas Mother Sawyer discovers the nature of evil. Secondly, Frank's motives are depicted as being primarily psychological in origin, while the dramatization of Mother Sawyer concentrates a good deal upon social pressures, although there is also a fair amount of overlap in these respects. There is thus a counterpointing of themes between the two plots which, combined with the independent activity of the Dog, tends to obscure the play's structural unity.

Frank Thorney is weak-willed and complaisant, desiring nothing more than general approval and a quiet life. So he has married Winifred, his fellow-servant, in the knowledge that this will gratify not only her but also their employer, Sir Arthur Clarington, who is actually hoping to manipulate Frank's willingness to please for his own lecherous ends. At the same time, Frank shows no qualms about parting from his wife immediately after their wedding, with the vague promise of seeing her “once every month at least” (I.i.44), so as not to risk displeasing his father who wishes him to marry Susan Carter. Nevertheless, Frank is quite prepared to deceive Old Thorney about his marriage in order to secure an inheritance:

                                                                                                                        I'll use
Such dutiful and ready means, that ere
He can have notice of what's past, th'inheritance
To which I am born Heir, shall be assur'd:
That done, why let him know it; if he like it not,
Yet he shall have no power in him left
To cross the thriving of it.

(I.i.26-32)

The main import of this speech, however, is to demonstrate Frank's habit of self-delusion, because he should know perfectly well that there is no such inheritance available. Old Thorney makes this quite clear the first time they meet in the play: “I need not tell you / With what a labyrinth of dangers dayly / The best part of my whole Estate's encumbred” (I.ii.124-26). This explains why Frank has had to go into the service of Sir Arthur and why his father wants to see him married to Susan, the daughter of a wealthy yeoman.

A tendency towards self-delusion is probably likewise implicit in the oath of fidelity to Winifred which Frank goes on to reaffirm:

                                                                                                              Once more in hearing
Of Heaven and thee, I vow, that never henceforth
Disgrace, reproof, lawless affections, threats,
Or what can be suggested 'gainst our Marriage,
Shall cause me falsifie that Bridal-Oath
That bindes me thine. And, Winnifride, when ever
The wanton heat of youth by subtle baits
Of beauty, or what womans Art can practice,
Draw me from onely loving thee; let Heaven
Inflict upon my life some fearful ruine.

(I.i.58-67)

The Witch of Edmonton is too psychologically complex a drama to be considered simply as an illustration of the consequences of breaking such an oath, and the dramatists do not point this moral of the story.⁵ All the same, the oaths in the play are significant. Cuddy Banks is eventually told by the Dog about the dangers of swearing and cursing, and the Dog's speech also draws attention to the parallel between Frank's oath here and Mother Sawyer's later cursing of Old Banks: “Thou never art so distant / From an evil Spirit, but that thy Oaths, / Curses and Blasphemies pull him to thine Elbow” (V.i.127-29). The swearing of an oath is not something that should be undertaken lightly, although to swear one and keep to it is legitimate; Old Carter, for instance, is proud that “my word and my deed shall be proved one at all times” (I.ii.6-7). Winifred likewise has a healthy respect for oaths and fulfils her own vow to reform her life, yet she rounds on Sir Arthur when he frivolously swears “by this good Sun-shine”:

                                                                                                              Can you name
That syllable of good, and yet not tremble,
To think to what a foul and black intent,
You use it for an Oath?

(I.i.180-83)

In a lighter vein, Susan Carter upbraids her suitor Warbeck for his extravagant oaths, “By the honour of Gentility” and “By this white hand of thine” (I.ii.49, 52). But Frank Thorney, for his part, is oblivious to all this.

Indeed, he is not even really conscious of the seriousness of bigamy. Although he responds indignantly to his father's accusations, he nonetheless fully intends to go ahead and marry Susan:

What do you take me for? an Atheist?
One that nor hopes the blessedness of life
Hereafter, neither fears the vengeance due
To such as make the Marriage-bed an Inne,
Which Travellers day and night,
After a toylsome lodging leave at pleasure?
Am I become so insensible of losing
The glory of Creations work? My soul!
O I have liv'd too long.

(I.ii.172-80)

Frank has not suddenly “become so insensible” of losing his soul; he has never been alert to that danger and is not so now in spite of the unmistakable seriousness that Old Thorney puts into his warning: “Darest thou persevere yet? and pull down wrath / As hot as flames of hell, to strike thee quick / Into the Grave of horror?” (I.ii.181-83). Frank proceeds to deceive his father by means of Sir Arthur's letter and then to go through with the wedding, still in the belief that this will please Old Thorney. It is sufficient to set his mind at ease if the people around him continue to call him “Honest Frank” and “My good Son” (I.i.116; I.ii.200). All the same, by the end of his interview with his father even Frank recognizes that he has got himself deeply embroiled, but instead of examining his own conscience he starts to shift the blame onto an inevitable fate:

          On every side I am distracted:
Am waded deeper into mischief,
Then virtue can avoid. But on I must:
Fate leads me: I will follow.

(I.ii.191-94)

He could, of course, easily evade a malign “Fate” and disentangle himself from this “mischief” by owning up to his marriage with Winifred and withdrawing from the second, bigamous wedding. But Frank has no real conception either of “virtue” or of the sin that he is about to commit. He declares that “No Man can hide his shame from Heaven that views him. / In vain he flees, whose destiny pursues him” (I.ii.227-28), yet he is not sufficiently conscious of his own “shame” to do anything about it. At the end of the scene the excitement over the imminent wedding is mounting and Frank alone fails to share in the general air of anticipation; Susan speaks tenderly, “Pray Heaven I may deserve the blessing sent me. / Now my heart is settled,” but there is an ironic ring to his brief response, “So is mine” (I.ii.223-24).

The next time Frank appears on the stage he is married to two different women. Susan's speech, “'Las, Sir, I am young, / Silly, and plain; more, strange to those contents / A wife should offer” (II.ii.79-81), contains a certain pathos in view of the fact that her husband, who should be equally “strange to those contents,” is already familiar with them as provided by Winifred. In fact until now Winifred has been a wholly suitable partner for him because she seems prepared to accept him on his own terms. In contrast, Susan cannot believe that Frank should fail to live up to what she has expected of their marriage, and sensing after their wedding that he is uneasy about something, she blames herself for it. Frank in turn is evasive and resorts to extravagant but meaningless flattery of her: “Thou art all perfection” and so on (II.ii.95-106). The rhetorical style of this speech represents a conventional method of indicating romantic passion, but it is in contrast to his usual manner of speaking and, because Susan's diction is often a little more elevated than his (as in this episode and in their parting scene), this can create the impression that Frank is desperately trying to raise himself to her level; the difference in their speech thus symbolizes the more profound level on which they are incompatible. His flattery, however, is to no avail, and it gives way to a passage which reveals the extent of the inner torment that he is by now suffering, the apparently mixed metaphors of the Hydra growing wild and taking root and of the leeches twisting about his heart vividly describing the feelings both of turmoil and of constriction in Frank's breast:

Sus.: Come, come, those golden strings of flattery
Shall not tie up my speech, Sir; I must know
The ground of your disturbance.
Frank:                                                                                          Then look here;
For here, here is the fen in which this Hydra
Of discontent grows rank.
Sus.:                                                            Heaven sheild it: where?
Frank: In mine own bosom: here the cause has root;
The poysoned Leeches twist about my heart,
And will, I hope, confound me.

(II.ii.107-14)

The fact of the matter is that in Susan he has encountered something quite new, “so rare a goodness” (II.ii.138). She presents a challenge to the whole basis of his personality since in her presence he is forced to acknowledge the difference that there is between good and evil. The result is the opening up of a deep division within Frank's character because the sort of existence that he has enjoyed until now has involved wrongdoing and represents an affront to Susan's innocent goodness. But in the end his old way of life is too deeply engrained for him to act on this discovery, and so he abjures it, leaving Susan in order to run away with Winifred. In a sense the two women symbolize the division within Frank, and the pain that it causes him is suggested by his unwillingness to be with the two of them together. When Susan comes to bid him farewell he tries to send the disguised Winifred on ahead, and because Susan asks her to stay he himself walks apart from them. Yet even in the light of his new recognition of right and wrong Frank tries to justify his actions and to avoid accepting any sort of moral responsibility. From previously invoking fate, he now tries to shift the blame for his situation onto his father, even though there is nothing in the play to support such an accusation:

Let my Father then make the restitution,
Who forc'd me take the bribe: it is his gift
And patrimony to me; so I receive it.
He would not bless, nor look a Father on me,
Until I satisfied his angry will.
When I was sold, I sold my self again
(Some Knaves have done't in Lands, and I in Body)
For money, and I have the hire.

(III.ii.22-29)

With Winifred, Frank could perhaps maintain this sort of ingenuous fiction, but in front of Susan he finds himself unable to overlook his own guilt: “I do not lay the sin unto your charge, / 'Tis all mine own” (III.iii.33-34). Because such goodness does oblige him to make an admission like this he finds its presence unbearable and consequently tries to part from Susan as quickly as possible. Yet at the same time she retains an attraction for him, and this makes him accede to her fatal request to accompany him through one more field. He speaks of her as a thorn in his flesh, but a thorn on which a rose grows: “What a Thorne this Rose grows on? parting were sweet, / But what a trouble 'twill be to obtain it?” (III.ii.118-19). Sensing this division within Frank, the diabolical Dog seizes the opportunity to brush up against him and plant in his troubled mind the idea that he might be at ease again if he were to do away with Susan: “Now for an early mischief and a sudden: / The minde's about it now. One touch from me / Soon sets the body forward” (III.iii.1-3). Thus it is only when Frank has become properly conscious of good and evil that he carries out the terrible, evil act which had never previously entered his mind. Yet his new level of awareness also renders him unable to delude himself as to what he has done. His earlier fatalism contained echoes of Macbeth and now, like Macbeth at a similar stage of his career, he is ready to embrace evil and defy the consequences: “'Tis done; and I am in: once past our height, / We scorn the deepst Abyss” (III.iii.65-66). So he rapidly devises the scheme to make it appear as if he and Susan were attacked by Warbeck and Somerton, and the Dog lends his assistance in tying him to a tree.

Frank's defiant attitude, however, reckons without two things. The first is the independent part played by the Dog in prompting him to kill Susan, although Frank believes that it was his own idea:

I did not purpose to have added murther;
The Devil did not prompt me: till this minute
You might have safe returned; now you cannot:
You have dogg'd your own death.

(III.iii.36-39)

The pun in the last of these lines addressed to Susan just as he is about to stab her provides the audience with a comment on Frank's error, but the Dog is not visible to anybody in the play except for Mother Sawyer and Cuddy Banks. The Dog appears to help Frank in making his alibi more credible, but the Dog is a devil and has his own reasons for doing so. Like the witches in Macbeth, the Dog is single-mindedly serving his own ends and not those of the individuals with whom he has contact. His purpose with regard to Frank Thorney is not only to prompt him to commit the sin of murdering Susan but also to ensure that his crime is detected and that he is executed for it, thus paving the way for his damnation. When Frank's guilt does emerge the Dog is present, according to the stage direction, “shrugging as it were for joy, and dances” (IV.ii.65 s.d.). The second factor for which Frank has not made allowance is the manifestation of divine Providence which is to disclose his guilt so that justice may be done and to play upon his conscience in order that he might confess and repent and so achieve salvation, even though this will also mean his death upon the gallows.

Even before the workings of Providence become apparent through the discovery by Katherine Carter of a bloodstained knife in Frank's pocket and the appearance of Susan's spirit, Frank displays a troubled conscience:

                              when a man has been an hundred yeers,
Hard travelling o're the tottering bridge of age,
He's not the thousand part upon his way.
All life is but a wandring to finde home:
When we are gone, we are there. Happy were man,
Could here his Voyage end; he should not then
Answer how well or ill he steer'd his Soul,
By Heaven's or by Hell's Compass; how he put in
(Loosing bless'd Goodness shore) at such a sin;
Nor how life's dear provision he has spent:
Nor how far he in's Navigation went
Beyond Commission. This were a fine Raign,
To do ill, and not hear of it again.
Yet then were Man more wretched then a Beast:
For, Sister, our dead pay is sure the best.

(IV.ii.28-42)

In this moving speech a Frank who is no longer the defiant villain of the murder scene puts into words the knowledge of good and evil that he has acquired and the recognition that he alone can be held responsible for his actions. The difficulty of accepting such a realization is expressed in the lines “This were a fine Raign, / To do ill, and not hear of it again,” for they are so strongly reminiscent of his career prior to the murder of Susan.⁶ Yet at the end of his speech he claims that moral knowledge is what raises a human being to a level above that of a mere animal and leaves him finally answerable to the sure judgment, and mercy, of God. In effect the old Frank, who, when he had done wrong, desired nothing more than not to hear any more about it, is condemned as something almost less than fully human, and the promise of a deeper humanity in him is soon to be fulfilled. There is no longer any real illusion that he can escape justice, although he denies Old Carter's direct accusation, and when Katherine is sent by her father to fetch officers Frank only half-heartedly asks “For whom?” (IV.ii.159). This forms a natural prelude to his affirmation of Winifred's innocence in the course of which his own guilt is fully disclosed. The end of the scene sees him hoping to escape not earthly punishment but eternal damnation: “my wages now are paid, / Yet my worst punishment shall, I hope, be staid” (IV.ii.193-94). Frank reaches the highest point of his development when he goes repentantly to his death, conscious at last of having achieved a degree of goodness:

                                                                                                    He is not lost,
Who bears his peace within him: had I spun
My Web of life out at full length, and dream'd
Away my many years in lusts, in surfeits,
Murthers of Reputations, gallant sins
Commended or approv'd; then though I had
Died easily, as great and rich men do,
Upon my own Bed, not compell'd by Justice,
You might have mourn'd for me indeed; my miseries
Had been as everlasting, as remediless:
But now the Law hath not arraign'd, condemn'd
With greater rigour my unhappy Fact,
Then I my self have every little sin
My memory can reckon from my Child-hood:
A Court hath been kept here, where I am found
Guilty; the difference is, my impartial Judge
Is much more gracious then my Faults
Are monstrous to be nam'd; yet they are monstrous.

(V.iii.73-90)

The division within Frank's character, which provided the Dog with an opening into which he could creep, is finally healed. His judgment of himself is severe and comprehensive, and he is even grateful to the law for condemning him. For all this is a conventional scaffold speech such as is characteristic of domestic tragedy; the responses of the onlookers, even of those he has most wronged, lend conviction to the scene.

The pattern of development in the career and character of Frank Thorney finds its counterpart in that of Mother Sawyer, the old woman who goes to the gallows, convicted of witchcraft, at the same time as Frank. The first appearance of the supposed witch is unforgettable: “poor, deform'd and ignorant, / And like a Bow buckl'd and bent together,” she enters gathering “a few rotten sticks to warm me” (II.i.3-4, 21). This lonely figure is shunned, abused, and taken for a witch by the community of Edmonton because she is old and deformed, and steals a few sticks from time to time to burn on her fire, but most of all because their own ill-treatment of her has bred in her a bad temper and a sharp tongue. But the key word that she employs to describe herself is “ignorant.” Initially she means uneducated, but she also uses the word to insist that she lacks any knowledge of witchcraft, although her neighbours seem to be unintentionally teaching her about it:

                                                                                Some call me Witch;
And being ignorant of my self, they go
About to teach me how to be one: urging,
That my bad tongue (by their bad usage made so)
Forespeaks 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.

(II.i.8-15)

The conclusion of this speech does more than anything to demonstrate convincingly that Mother Sawyer neither is a witch nor possesses the knowledge of good and evil that is implicit in the notion of witchcraft. Her desire for revenge upon, for instance, Old Banks is malevolent in a way that Frank Thorney's initial wrongdoing is not, but at the same time her bitterness is the natural result of provocation rather than conscious wickedness. Indeed, it is difficult to blame her for cursing her tormentor, Old Banks, who shortly beforehand has driven her off his land with blows:

Still vex'd? still tortur'd? That Curmudgeon Banks,
Is ground of all my scandal. I am shunn'd
And hated like a sickness: made a scorn
To all degrees and sexes. I have heard old Beldames
Talk of Familiars in the shape of Mice,
Rats, Ferrets, Weasels, and I wot not what
That have appear'd, and suck'd, some say, their blood.
But by what means they came acquainted with them,
I'm now ignorant: would some power good or bad
Instruct me which way I might be reveng'd
Upon this Churl, I'd go out of my self,
And give this Fury leave to dwell within
This ruin'd Cottage, ready to fall with age:
Abjure all goodness: be at hate with prayer;
And study Curses, Imprecations,
Blasphemous speeches, Oaths, detested Oaths,
Or any thing that's ill; so I might work
Revenge upon this Miser, this black Cur,
That barks, and bites, and sucks the very blood
Of me, and of my credit. 'Tis all one,
To be a Witch, as to be counted one.
Vengeance, shame, ruine, light upon that Canker.

(II.i.94-115)

Mother Sawyer has acknowledged her own “bad tongue,” but she is certainly unaware of the danger of letting a curse like this escape her lips, although it is graphically realized by the entrance of the Dog who claims her allegiance: “Ho! have I found thee cursing? now thou art mine own” (II.i.116). Her reaction to his appearance is still one of total surprise and incomprehension: “Thine? what art thou?” (II.i.117). While Frank Thorney never gave a second thought to the morality of his conduct, Mother Sawyer had naively assumed that “'Tis all one, / To be a Witch, as to be counted one,” but she is quickly disabused of this notion by the Dog's description of himself as “He thou hast so often importun'd / To appear to thee, the Devil” (II.i.117-18). The ignorant old woman is rudely awakened to the knowledge of good and evil and she is certainly horrified as well as fascinated at the appearance of the devil; the Dog, however, soon gains ascendancy over her by a mixture of threats and promises of furthering her desire for vengeance, so that against her better judgment she agrees to seal with her blood the pact which will make over to the devil her soul and body. As the Dog departs at the end of the episode Mother Sawyer mutters after him, “Contaminetur nomen tuum” (II.i.176), meaning “defiled be thy name,” instead of the prayer that he has taught her, thus providing the audience with an ironic comment on the evil to which she has, partly through weakness and partly out of bitterness, aligned herself. She must now be aware that it is not “all one, / To be a Witch, as to be counted one,” and in this light her earlier remark, that “I'd go out of my self, / And give this Fury leave to dwell within / This ruin'd Cottage,” seems to hint that this new consciousness of good and evil is to open up a painful division within the character of the witch, not unlike that which it gave rise to in Frank Thorney. Drawn by the furtherance of her revenge, and increasingly by the affection that the Dog apparently offers her in her otherwise isolated existence, she is unable to resist the blandishments of the devil.

Mother Sawyer's wickedness lies not so much in the crimes she perpetrates by means of her familiar as in the fact of her signing over her soul and body to the devil.⁷ In homiletic terms her curse upon Old Banks is equivalent to Frank's broken oath of fidelity to Winifred, and her sealing of the pact with her blood corresponds to his murdering Susan, both of these sins being committed under the diabolical influence of the Dog. The Dog sucks Mother Sawyer's blood from her arm to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning which represent a conventional dramatic method of signifying divine disapproval. While the actions that the Dog is to carry out on her behalf are malevolent, the worst is to blight the corn and kill the cattle of Old Banks, and this vengeance is not entirely undeserved.⁸ Once she has sealed their pact with her blood the Dog reveals the limitations of his ability to harm Old Banks, or anybody who is not wholly wicked, personally; it is apparent that the witch has in fact sold her soul very cheaply. The Dog has no particular interest in furthering Mother Sawyer's revenge for its own sake, and after she has promised him her soul and body he serves her as her familiar only for so long as it takes to ensure her conviction for witchcraft, when, as he gloatingly informs her, her execution should bring with it her damnation: “thy time is come, to curse, and rave and die. The Glass of thy sins is full, and it must run out at Gallows … thou art so ripe to fall into Hell, that no more of my Kennel will so much as bark at him that hangs thee” (V.i.63-64, 60-61). She, of course, believes all along that the Dog is her servant and curses him at the end of the play when he will no longer even make a show of obeying her. The Dog, however, defines their relationship more accurately, “Out Witch! Thy tryal is at hand: / Our prey being had, the Devil does laughing stand”; as she is led away he stands aloof and remarks sardonically, “Let not the World, Witches or Devils condemn, / They follow us, and then we follow them” (V.i.75-76, 84-85). The Dog again demonstrates his independence from his victim, an independence that allows him to function in the main plot as well as in the sub-plot in spite of the lack of connection between Mother Sawyer and Frank Thorney, and to appear in quite a different role when alone with Cuddy Banks. Yet there can be no doubt that the Dog “shrugging as it were for joy” as Katherine Carter finds Frank's bloodstained knife, and the Dog laughing softly to himself as the witch is arrested, are one and the same.

Mother Sawyer's misapprehension of her relationship with the Dog inevitably brings to mind the comparable situation in Doctor Faustus. The parallel further suggests that repentance might still be possible for Mother Sawyer because Faustus, although he has similarly sealed with his blood a pact with the devil, is urged until the very last moment to repent and be saved. In The Witch of Edmonton there is some doubt as to Mother Sawyer's ultimate fate. As she goes to her execution there is none of the forgiveness and reconciliation that accompany Frank and nobody expresses the conviction that she will achieve salvation. But the onlookers are deeply prejudiced against her, and in spite of considerable provocation and a certain amount of wavering on her part she does finally leave the stage with some sense of having attained, with difficulty, a new measure of goodness in her repentance:

These Dogs will mad me: I was well resolv'd
To die in my repentance; though 'tis true,
I would live longer if I might: yet since
I cannot, pray torment me not; my conscience
Is setled as it shall be: all take heed
How they believe the Devil, at last hee'l cheat you. …
Have I scarce breath enough to say my Prayers?
And would you force me to spend that in bawling?
Bear witness, I repent all former evil;
There is no damned Conjurer like the Devil.

(V.iii.41-51)

Despite her reluctance to die, the witch does not go to her death cursing and raving quite as the Dog had anticipated. Edward Sackville West remarks that “her old spirit, which originally conjured up the Dog, is by no means dead”;⁹ what she shows in this final scene, however, is not exactly the same spirit as summoned the Dog, for she has become much wiser in the knowledge of good and evil and now explicitly rejects the devil. In view of the sympathy she commands on account of the way in which she has been persecuted, it is perhaps just to believe that she can still benefit from the mercy of God.¹⁰ The main reason for any uncertainty here lies in the fact that the dramatists do not depict her conscience becoming “setled as it shall be,” as they do with Frank Thorney, but only show the witch's anger at being deserted by the Dog, with the result that there is less of a sense of the division within her character being healed than in the case of Frank.

The Mother Sawyer plot is not without psychological as well as social interest, as the old woman ostracized by the community turns to the Dog for comfort, but the dramatization is nevertheless primarily from a social angle. Thus, as her apprehension and conviction draw near, she defends herself not by reference to her conscience but by a comparison of her crime with those at which society winks:

A Witch? who is not?
Hold not that universal Name in scorne then.
What are your painted things in Princes Courts?
Upon whose Eye-lids Lust sits blowing fires
To burn Mens Souls in sensual hot desires:
Upon whose naked Paps, a Leachers thought
Acts Sin in fouler shapes then can be wrought.

(IV.i.101-107)

She likewise rounds on the typically Jacobean propensities for extravagance and ostentation, as well as on scolds and lawyers, and on seducers, thus giving Sir Arthur Clarington an unpleasant moment. All these do more harm to the fabric of society than does the witchcraft of an impotent old woman like herself:

                                                                                Now an old woman
Ill favour'd grown with yeers, if she be poor,
Must be call'd Bawd or Witch. Such so abus'd
Are the course Witches: t'other are the fine,
Spun for the Devil's own wearing.

(IV.i.120-24)

Such wide-ranging social satire is perhaps out of place in the mouth of an uneducated character, and there is also a change in this episode to a more rhetorical style of speech than Mother Sawyer normally employs, but it does serve to suggest the penetration of her awareness of right and wrong and to broaden the scope of this theme in the play.

Social implications of the theme of moral knowledge are present in the main plot too, because Sir Arthur Clarington plays a significant part in Frank Thorney's career. Sir Arthur is both oblivious to right and wrong and sufficiently influential socially to cause considerable harm. Edward Sackville West defines his role in a penetrating comment on the play: “here we touch what was probably at the bottom of the dramatists' conception: the idea that frivolity (and Sir Arthur is entirely frivolous) is the only ultimately unforgivable sin.”¹¹ When Frank wants him to write a letter which will deceive Old Thorney about his marriage with Winifred, Sir Arthur's qualms disappear as soon as he is assured that no blame can attach to him. His conscience remains unaffected by Winifred's rebukes, and the way in which he casually dismisses her from his mind once it is clear that their liaison cannot continue is an indication of the superficiality of his emotions. Yet he is in a position to pressure Frank into marrying his pregnant mistress;¹² and he might also have a hand in Mother Sawyer's fate, for when her tirade against social ills touches on seduction he abruptly denounces her: “By one thing she speaks, / I know now she's a Witch, and dare no longer / Hold conference with the Fury” (IV.i.144-46). The implication is that what Mother Sawyer says comes too close for comfort to describing his own relations with Winifred, and the Dog seems to allude to this when he says, “there's a Dog already biting's conscience” (IV.i.263). Other characters, too, recognize his role in the tragic outcome of events:

Just.: Sir Arthur, though the Bench hath mildly censur'd your Errours, yet you have indeed been the Instrument that wrought all their mis-fortunes: I would wish you pay'd down your Fine speedily and willingly.

(V.ii.1-4)

O. Cart.: Come, come, if luck had serv'd, Sir Arthur, and every man had his due, somebody might have totter'd ere this, without paying Fines: like it as you list.

(V.iii.162-64)

However, Sir Arthur's acknowledgments of responsibility totally lack conviction and his social status protects him from the consequences of his actions; if he really is at all uneasy in his conscience he shows no sign of it in public.

While Sir Arthur is supremely unaware of the distinction between right and wrong, Old Banks and the other rustics are not without some traces of the same fault, at least in so far as their treatment of Mother Sawyer is concerned. As a result of their general ignorance or lack of education they make ridiculous but damaging accusations against her. They believe, too, that they can prove her witchcraft by setting fire to her thatch, when, if she comes running to the scene, it will indicate that she is indeed a witch; the Justice treats this idea with the scorn that it deserves. Even the otherwise wholly sympathetic Old Carter joins with them in casting unjust aspersions upon Mother Sawyer at the end of the play: “Did not you bewitch Frank to kill his wife? he could never have don't without the Devil” (V.iii.26-27).¹³ Her reply is instructive: “Who doubts it? but is every Devil mine?” (V.iii.28). Nevertheless, all these country-folk are basically decent people, the Dog even describing Old Banks to Mother Sawyer in terms which retrieve some sympathy for him:

                                        though he be curs'd to thee,
Yet of himself he is loving to the world,
And charitable to the poor. Now Men
That, as he, love goodness, though in smallest measure,
Live without compass of our reach.

(II.i.153-57)

Yet the fact that such individuals do play a significant part in driving Mother Sawyer first into witchcraft and then to the gallows places rustic ignorance in a darker, more serious light than is usual in the drama of the period. Even the pure innocence of Susan Carter, who can believe no evil of Frank, proves fatal to her.

Cuddy Banks alone is sufficiently simple through and through to sense the essential harmlessness of Mother Sawyer; a witch is for him little more than a character in a morris-dance. The Dog he treats simply as an animal and when he gets a ducking he accepts it philosophically: “thou didst but thy kinde neither” (III.i.100). Later he is to protect the Dog from his father and the other rustics who are out to catch the witch's familiar. The devil is in turn powerless to harm him:

                                                                      We can meet his folly,
But from his Vertues must be Run-aways.
We'll sport with him: but when we reckoning call,
We know where to receive: th'Witch pays for all.

(III.i.73-76)

Yet Cuddy Banks is not frivolous in the way that Sir Arthur is, and once the Dog reveals to him his part in Mother Sawyer's fate he is quick to insist that he entertained him “ever as a Dog, not as a Devil,” to which the Dog replies, “True; and so I us'd thee doggedly, not divellishly” (V.i.107-109). While the Dog is disclosing something of his real nature, Cuddy fails to understand the pleasure that he takes in wickedness, and he even attempts to persuade him to give up his old ways. However, when the Dog concludes by offering to become Cuddy's familiar he is ready to wash his hands of him: “I know thy qualities too well, Ile give no suck to such Whelps; therefore henceforth I defie thee; out and avaunt” (V.i.176-78). Beneath the simplicity of Cuddy Banks there is an innate recognition of right and wrong which unconsciously directs his actions. His is a simplicity to confound the devil, and the Dog replies to his dismissal, “Nor will I serve for such a silly Soul” (V.i.179).

While the two plots of The Witch of Edmonton are tenuously connected by subject matter, it should be evident that the roles of a large section of the community of Edmonton, not to mention the Dog, are determined in accordance with their awareness of the moral dimension, helping to bind the play together into a thematic whole. Most importantly, the two main strands of action gain a structural unity from their complementary treatment of the theme of the knowledge of good and evil. It is perhaps the case, too, that besides the play's other qualities, its richness of social detail for instance, the handling of topical and domestic events at this more profound level contributes to the lasting quality of The Witch of Edmonton.

Notes

1. M. Joan Sargeaunt, John Ford (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1935), p. 40. Elizabeth Sawyer was executed for witchcraft at Tyburn on 19 April 1621 and the play was probably written during the summer of that year; see Gerald Eades Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941-1968), 3:271. The witch scenes are usually attributed mainly to Dekker, and Frank Thorney and Winifred to Ford, while Rowley is credited with the creation of Cuddy Banks; see Sargeaunt, p. 34. I have made some tentative suggestions in “The Two Plots of The Witch of Edmonton,” Notes and Queries, n.s. 31 (1984):229-30, as to how the initial association of the story of Frank's bigamy and the witchcraft material might have come about. All quotations from The Witch of Edmonton are from Fredson Bowers, ed., The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1953-1961), 3:481-568.

2. Leonora Leet Brodwin, “The Domestic Tragedy of Frank Thorney in The Witch of Edmonton,” SEL 7, 2 (1967):311.

3. Edward Sackville West, “The Significance of The Witch of Edmonton,” Criterion 17 (1937):30.

4. The present discussion of The Witch of Edmonton is nonetheless indebted in various ways to the previous studies by West, pp. 23-32, and Brodwin, pp. 311-28. I should also like to express here my thanks to Dr. Sandra Clark for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this essay.

5. Henry Hitch Adams, English Domestic or, Homiletic Tragedy 1575 to 1642, Columbia Univ. Studies in English and Comparative Literature, no. 159 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1943), p. 134, points out that Frank Thorney's tragedy is nevertheless partly God's punishment for his breaking of this solemn oath and that it is common in the drama of the English renaissance for a character unwittingly to bring down a curse upon himself in this way.

6. Graham Greene uses these lines from The Witch of Edmonton as a highly apt epigraph to Brighton Rock in which the hero, Pinkie, is tormented by his own awareness of good and evil.

7. In the pamphlet which provides the source for this plot, Henry Goodcole's The wonderfull discouerie of Elizabeth Sawyer a Witch (1621), the witch confesses to several evil acts such as the killing of children; the dramatists, however, concentrate upon her relationship with the Dog rather than her crimes.

8. The play does not make it entirely clear whether or not the witch really is responsible for the death of Anne Ratcliff (see IV.i.167-215 and V.iii.32-35); the episode was probably imperfectly assimilated from the source.

9. West, p. 31.

10. Adams, p. 139, takes the opposite view; the source alludes to the inscrutability of divine mercy.

11. West, p. 31.

12. Probably nobody knows whether Winifred's baby really belongs to Frank or to Sir Arthur.

13. Perhaps Old Carter's distrust of Warbeck (see I.ii.74-90) is the result of a similar prejudice; Warbeck's conduct in the play is not suspect at all.