Must I for that be made a common sink
For all the filth and rubbish of men's tongues To fall and run into? Some call me witch, And being ignorant of myself, they go About to teach me how to be one
From the offset Elizabeth Sawyer describes the performativity of what it means to be a witch ("teach me how to be one") - her storyline from the very offset raises the question as to whether identity is intrinsic or whether it is a construction relying on a community of people who perceive you in a particular way.
Out, alas! My soul and body?
An initial rejection from Elizabeth Sawyer quickly becomes an acceptance of giving herself to the devil - the lines also jitter in tone which is appropriate considering the genre of the play is Tragicomedy. Sawyer goes from commanding the dog to leave to the sexualized implications of emphasizing the giving of the "body" over the soul.
Still wronged by every slave, and not a dog Bark in his dame's defence?
These lines epitomize the climax of the relationship between Witch and Dog, namely that the latter has broken his social contract with the former as her familiar and in some ways her only friend within the world of the play. Sawyer is in the same position as when she started and even her very own "Dog" - an animal whose unconditional love is still stressed to this day - has failed to defend her.
This was no honest servant's part, by your leave, Tom. This remember, I pray you, between you and I; I entertained you ever as a dog, not as a devil.
Here we are given the central outline in the relationship of Dog to Cuddy - while the latter insists that he saw the former as only a domesticated pet the believability of this the audience is forced to call into question. Indeed Dog sits uncomfortably as the epitome of evil but also with traces of the adorability and lovability of a domesticated pet - is the suggestion here that the boundaries we place between the domestic and the satanic aren't as opposed as we may think. Suitably for a domestic tragedy it would appear the playwrights situate the satanic firmly within the domestic and vice versa.
Enter Dog. [It is now white]
This is a crucial stage direction which holds some interesting connotations. When we first meet Dog it is suggested that he is suitably black - the color used across the Jacobean and Renaissance stage to stress devilishness and evil. The fact that Dog breaks from this mould for the last Act is particularly telling - it suggests that evil can hide under any color or mantle and that things cannot be easily expressed in black and white. Indeed it fits the whole moral 'grey' area of the piece in which it is possible to point out who is individually to blame for the community corruption.
