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 supposedly real-life events that took place in the village of Edmonton, then outside London, earlier that year. The play depicts Elizabeth Sawyer, an old woman shunned by her neighbors, who gets revenge by selling her soul to the Devil, who appears to her in the shape of a black dog called Tom. In addition, there are two subplots. One depicts a bigamist who murders his second wife at the devil's prompting, and the other depicts a clownish yokel who befriends the devil-dog.