John Marston (1) (–1634)

In 1611 two experienced London playwrights collaborated on a new play dramatizing a real-life contemporary wonder, Mary Frith, known as Moll Cutpurse, "a sometime thief and notorious cross-dresser" (ix). In Feb 2023 at the Blackfriars theater in Staunton VA a group of enthusiastic amateur players offered a staged reading of the rarely performed play, prompting me to revisit it. It's at once clear why it has become popular in recent years, after almost 4 centuries of neglect.

The real-life Frith was charged with theft and a host of notoriously male behaviors - drunkenness, swearing, dueling, swaggering, and cross-dressing. Middleton and Dekker's Moll affects some of those behaviors but is presented sympathetically as an outspoken free-thinker transcending the rigid constraints of her class and gender. Such froward behavior attracts some undesired admirers to this "maddest, fantastical'st girl" (2.1.192) for her "heroic spirit and masculine womanhood" (2.1.336-7), but much of the play rehearses the knee-jerk attacks on one who "strays so from her kind [that] Nature repents she made her" (1.2.214-5). Her non-binary gender presentation is at the heart of her offense: "It is a thing One knows not how to name; . . . 'Tis woman more than man, Man more than woman, and . . . The sun gives her two shadows to one shape" (1.2.129-33). The fact that such attacks come from the play's senex, Sir Alexander Wengrave, who blocks a heterosexual pair of true lovers from wedded bliss, makes clear where the plot's sympathies rest.

The play offers Moll several memorable bits of stage business. Twice in act 3 when in male garb she draws her weapon to engage with and defeat male opponents. Then act 4 finds her placing a viol da gamba between her trousered legs to perform two songs about transgressive wives, and in act 5 she engages in a bout of "canting," a slang duel that ends with yet another song.

Her verbal climax comes earlier, in an articulate attack on a would-be seducer, the poorly endowed Laxton (lacks stone): "Thou'rt one of those That thinks each woman thy fond flexible whore. . . . What durst move you, sir, To think me whorish? . . . "Cause, you'll say, I'm given to sport, I'm often merry, jest? Had mirth no kindred in the world but lust? . . . I scorn to prostitute myself to a man, I that can prostitute a man to me. . . she that has wit and spirit May scorn to live beholding to her body for meat Or for apparel . . . Base is the mind that kneels unto her body . . . My spirit shall be mistress of this house As long as I have time in't" (3.1.72-140).

Though Moll is the play's featured character, her part in the love-plot is relatively small. It is mostly limited to unmasking plotters and dodging entrapment while allying with the young lover Sebastian Wengrave to cozen his father and marry his true love Mary (about whom the roaring girl says "I pitied her for name's sake, that a Moll Should be so crossed in love" (4.1.68-9). Much of the play is taken up with the misadventures of two city gallants, whose attempts to "wap, niggle and fadoodle" (5.1.189-95) with two housewives and bamboozle their husbands are thwarted by the wives themselves (as in Shakespeare's Merry Wives).

In the end, though this city comedy flirts with transgression at every turn, it ends up affirming heterosexual marriage and wifely wiles. Sir Alexander the senex apologizes for his errors and praises Moll as "a good wench" and the foxy housewives as "kind gentlewomen, whose sparkling presence Are glories set in marriage" (5.2.268-9). Perhaps the chief roarer speaks for her sisters as well as herself when she proclaims, "I please myself, and care not else who loves me" (5.1.332).… (plus d'informations)

The Malcontent by John Marston is an oddity of a play especially for one included in an ostensible book of tragedies. Nobody dies, no real revenge, and no moral redemption is here. Malevole graciously treats Duke Pietro who usurped. Aurelia, after so much time in the play spent railing against women is allowed to repent and seems sincere. Bilioso, the epitome of the opportunistic, bragging noble, is dismissed with contempt as is the play's villain Mendoza who has plotted all sorts of villanies. Ferneze, who has blatantly attempted adultery -- and who, by the code of the time, could probably justifiably killed -- is spared and relatively unrebuked. Marquerelle's fate remains unsure but the blatant, vigorously unshamed, unrepetent whore seems to come to no harm. Ferenze doesn't repent of his errors that I can see, and we don't get the sort of closure by marriage you find in traditional comedies of the time. There is the sort of railing against hypocrisy as found in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi and the emphasis of nobleness by act not birth. Marston doesn't dwell on death and decay imagery too much. Malevole is, like Bosola in Webster's Duchess of Malfi and Vindice in The Revenger's Tragedy by Thomas Middleton, given to surly, cutting remarks (which his fellow comrades in sin seem to love as playful railing) that rich with irony given his true identity. This play is profoundly Christian. Unlike Shakespeare's Hamlet, Malevole really is content with God granting vengeance. He seems to mainly hang around for opportunity. He reacts to what he reagrds as God's actions on Earth. There may be a note of political satire (apart from the obvious swipes at court life) in the reference to kings being deposed if they don't obey "heaven's enforced conditions." Perhaps this is an allusion to King James I divine right theory and a not so subtle reminder that God can depose as well as impose. The play is also Christian in its concern for redemption and forgiveness.

"The Atheist's Tragedy" from Cyril Tourneur produces some fine poetry on lust, revenge, and the atheistic, naturalistic view of the world versus the religious view. Charlemont is an amazingly passive hero. He is hardly an avenger but (to borrow a phrase from Michael Moorcock) merely a sailor on the seas of fate. His father, Montferrers, comes back from the dead as a ghost and urges his son to avenge his death yet reminds him, unlike Hamlet's father in Hamlet, that vengeance is God's. Charlemont willingly goes to jail and his execution. The only effort he puts forth is to take the gifts of fortune since he views them as signs from God as to what direction he should take. The play concludes with the blatantly stated moral that patience is the honest man's revenge. It is a moral lesson I've never encountered in any other Elizabethean or Jacobean drama. Usually heroes and villains are all too willing to take up vengeance. There are other Christian themes at work as in John Marston's The Malcontent. D'Amville wants to provide for himself and his family. A noble goal perverted into murder and incest. His proposal of incest to Castabella is couched in terms of man being the pinnacle of nature and not denying himself something they do (a subtle perversion of the concept of the Elizabethean Chain of Being) and providing an heir. Sebastian is lethally punished for his lecherous ways by Belforest. Snuffle is punished for his hypocritical pretense of virtue (Is his presence a satirical jab at puritans?) Levidulcia tries to convince Castabella to marry Rousard and uses sexual pleasure as the bait. For her part, Levidulcia repents of her ways after her lechery leads to Sebastian's and Belforest's death and kills herself. Her repentence and suicide seem too abrupt and unlikely. Yet, as Gomme reminds us in the introduction, we're dealing with a symbolic tale here, a morality lesson. The history of western literature for at least the past 300 years is an attempt to provide a more realistic narrative with devices like interior monologue and stream of consciousness. A story can never truly be a realistic depiction, in terms of the movement of time and space, of an event and trying to make it such is, beyond a certain point, usually counterproductive. The scene in the courtyard with its mistaken identity and all too easy concealment may be rather silly when staged (an even more extreme example is D'Amville axing himself in the climax), but it is a curious juxtaposition of death (the graveyard, skulls, and Borachio's corpse) and life and generation (in all its strange and frustrated forms: Charlemont's and Castabella's failed romance, D'Amville's incestous proposal to the latter, and Snuffe and Soquette's trist) as well as some good poetry. Borachio the henchman was not the villain of this drama. D'Amville was. It is interesting to note that, when he seems to go mad with the death of his son, the perception of the natural world, his wisdom, he prides himself on begins to fail him when he perceives a glass of wine as blood). Here is another play (a preeminently Christian one like The Malcontent) with comedy, lust, adultery, perverse sex (or, at least, the desiring if not the doing on D'Amville's part), and vengeance. Oh, and, of course, frustrated love.

"Women Beware Women" from Thomast Middleton is a play that features some of the best poetry of any Jacobean play, an intriguingly complicated plot (which begins to falter at the end of the fourth act), some very realistic dialogue, and an intriguing (at least I consider her such) villianess in Livia, and an amazing lack of virtue on anyone's part. Even Leantio, victim of Bianca's betrayal with the duke, seems all too eager to take his promotion and start commiting adultery with Livia. Likewise Isabella is deceived into commiting incest with Hippolito but turns all too readily to adultery with the Ward. The Cardinal, usually a corrupt character, is the only voice of virtue in the play, and he is more of a symbol than a real character. As usual this play featured murder and sex aplenty (including the theme of incest again). However, I found this play hard to read. Many of the humorous lines and much of the bantering I did not get the significance of (particularly where Leantio's mother and Livia were playing chess). I found the language particularly difficult. I also found some of the plot very puzzling (and the lack of stage directions, paritcularly in the fifth act, didn't help). Why does Guardino want to revenge himself on the Duke and Bianca when he knows Livia is the one that deceived him into accepting Isabella? Where did the "poisoned cup" Bianca drinks come from? How does Isabella die? Her own poisoned incense? Nevertheless, Middleton puts the device of the dramatic aside to extensive and good use. Usually it is only used for the villain or hero. Here almost everyone uses it. Middleton also does some complex staging (with heavy use of the above stage) especially in the celebrated chess scene. Middleton has good characterization particularly in the way Bianca reacts to being seduced by the Duke ("likes the treason well, but hates the traitor" -- Guardino), the Duke's reaction at the thorough scolding by his brother the Cardinal,, and Isabella's reaction at being told she has commited incest. It was also interesting to note that the Ward, though foolish, seemed to sense more of Isabella's corruption (at least sometimes) than anyone else. In short, this play is about lots of people rationalizing their immorality and realizing their corruption and dying for their sins. This play certainly has one of the more vitrolic views of women (and not just in the title). It also has a clear and typically Jacobean moral message: lust kills.… (plus d'informations)