<DIV>It is a historical phenomenon that while thousands of women were being<br>burnt as witches in early modern Europe, the English - although there<br>were a few celebrated trials and executions, one of which the play<br>dramatises - were not widely infected by the witch-craze. The stage<br>seems to have provided an outlet for anxieties about witchcraft, as<br>well as an opportunity for public analysis. The Witch of Edmonton<br>(1621) manifests this fundamentally reasonable attitude, with Dekker<br>insisting on justice for the poor and oppressed, Ford providing<br>psychological character studies, and Rowley the clowning. The village<br>community of Edmonton feels threatened by two misfits, Old Mother<br>Sawyer, who has turned to the devil to aid her against her unfeeling<br>neighbours, and Frank, who refuses to marry the woman of his father's<br>choice and ends up murdering her. This edition shows how the play<br>generates sympathy for both and how contemporaries would have responded<br>to its presentation of village life and witchcraft.</DIV>