William Rowley (1) (–1626)

One of my favorite English Renaissance plays, The Witch of Edmonton is a collaboration by three master playwrights of the period. Each took charge of a different plotline: Dekker, the true-life story of Elizabeth Sawyer, a poor, elderly woman executed for witchcraft; Rowley, the comic plot of the dull-brained but innocent Cuddy Banks, whose greatest ambition is to play the hobby horse in the upcoming Morris dancing; and Ford, the tragic plot of Frank Thorney, who becomes first a bigamist and show more then a murderer, all in pursuit of money. Interweaving all three plots is Dog, a devil in disguise who provides Mother Sawyer with power and companionship, who the affable Cuddy attempts to reform from his devil-dog ways, and who pushes Frank Thorney into murdering Susan, his clingy second wife. Witchcraft, sex, murder, bloody tokens, ghosts, a devil dog, Morris dancing, women in male disguise, confessions and executions--what more could you ask for in a good piece of Renaissance drama? Social commentary, maybe? Well, there's plenty of that as well: the shift from land-based to money-based economy, the pressure to marry for money while companionate marriage is on the rise, the politics of witchcraft accusations, the diminshment of traditional rural life, the strictures of a patriarchy, and more.

Not to be missed if you enjoy early seventeenth-century drama. show less

Most likely this play plays better than it reads. I'm sure that actors have a lot of fun with these changing changeling characters! In the barebones Amazon edition that I read it was often difficult to figure what was going on - the characters frequently use veiled, duplicitous, or purposefully obscure language to hide their intentions or actions from others - or even from themselves!

I'm looking forward to seeing "The Changeling" at Stratford (Ontario) this summer [2017].

The tragedy in this caught me a little off guard, and I am not sure if that is a reflection on the writers or if the style of tragedy changed a little from the Elizabethan to Jacobean periods.

A changeling is a fickle person, a waverer, a person posing as another person, or an idiot. The Changeling portrays them all. The play interchanges not only characters, but authors, too. Written in 1622 by William Rowley and Thomas Middleton, it is one of the most successful collaborations in the history of the theater.