Why a Dog?

During the English Witch Trials, many women who were accused of being witches gave very specific confessions of how the devil came to them, what harm they caused on other people, and what the agreements were between them and the devils. The Devil came to them in animal form, and through a "witch's mark," shaped like a teat, he would suck blood from the witch. These animal forms, called familiars, could be cats, dogs, rats, and even in some accounts, chickens. In The Witch of Edmonton, as in Goodcole's original account of the trial of the real Elizabeth Sawyer, Satan appears as a dog.

Why a dog? Why not a cat? It's funny how certain parts of history stick around in society and are incorporated as cultural ideas. Today's Halloween is strongly characterized by these witch trials, with the picture of a witch being old, ugly, and deformed like the Elizabeth Sawyer in the play, but also the black cat is a strong symbol of Halloween, bad luck, and also the pet of every witch. Despite the fame of The Witch of Edmonton, hardly anyone would associate a dog as being a witch's familiar.

Keeping this in mind, Rowley, Dekker, and Ford, authors of TWoE, seem to have written this play for our time (although of course they wrote it centuries ago!), as it has small subtleties that may subconsciously make the idea of a dog as a familiar more natural. For example, in Elizabeth's cursing speech, she makes no mention of cats at all. Instead, she suggests familiars in the shape of "rats, ferrets, [and] weasels." With the image of familiar beginning to form in the reader/audience's mind, in the same speech, she uses doglike imagery when describing Banks as her personal devil.

As she describes Banks as her version of the devil, he appears in the exact form in each detail: "this black cur that barks and bites, and sucks the very blood of me and my credit." (Act II, Scene i, Lines 116-118). The devil then appears in exact likeness to this description. Coincidence? The devil is known for temptation, as seen in Doctor Faustus, so perhaps listening to her curses, this is how he decides what form to take.

Dog or cat, he is successful. Dog or cat, he still accomplishes Elizabeth's turning to him, becoming the witch that society decided was her identity.