| Sumario: | This article analyzes the anti-Black racism that undergirds the character of Dog in Thomas Dekker, William Rowley, and John Ford's true-crime play The Witch of Edmonton (1621). By situating Dog in the intersecting traditions of Black devils in witchcraft literature and Black characters on the early modern stage, this article argues that the play uses Dog's Blackness to situate Mother Sawyer's turn to witchcraft as an act of apostasy. Witchcraft thus functions as a form of racecraft, a means through which the play actively constructs semantic associations between Blackness and evil and between whiteness and godliness. Ultimately, this article concludes with a call for scholars, theater reviewers, and theatrical practitioners not to reproduce The Witch of Edmonton 's racial politics in their own engagement with the play. This article analyzes the anti-Black racism that undergirds the character of Dog in Thomas Dekker, William Rowley, and John Ford's true-crime play The Witch of Edmonton (1621). By situating Dog in the intersecting traditions of Black devils in witchcraft literature and Black characters on the early modern stage, this article argues that the play uses Dog's Blackness to situate Mother Sawyer's turn to witchcraft as an act of apostasy. Witchcraft thus functions as a form of racecraft, a means through which the play actively constructs semantic associations between Blackness and evil and between whiteness and godliness. Ultimately, this article concludes with a call for scholars, theater reviewers, and theatrical practitioners not to reproduce The Witch of Edmonton's racial politics in their own engagement with the play.
|
|---|