Sex, money, marriage,

mothers, morality, and death

Thomas Middleton(1580-1627)

1599 Microcynicon: Six Snarling Satyres

1600 The Ghost of Lucrece

1604-6 Michaelmas Term

1605 A Trick to Catch the Old One

1605-6 Timon of Athens (with Shakespeare)

1606 The Revenger’s Tragedy

1609 The Two Gates of Salvation (treatise on Calvinism; rep. 1620 as The Marriage of the Old and New Testament)

1611 The Roaring Girl (with Thomas Dekker)

The Lady’s Tragedy

1613 A Chaste Maid in Cheapside

The Triumphs of Truth

1614 Masque of Cupids (lost; for the marriage of Robert Carr and Frances Howard)

1616 The Witch

1617 The Triumphs of Honour and Industry

1620 Hengist, King of Kent

1621 Women Beware Women

1622 The Changeling (with William Rowley)

1624 A Game at Chess

Selected Writings (dates often uncertain)

[Lucre’s] Wife I have a plot in my head, son; i’faith, husband, to cross you.

Sam Is it a tragedy plot, or a comedy plot, good mother?

A Trick to Catch the Old One (2.1.347-9)

(c. 1606; printed 1608)

Leantio Honest wedlockIs like a banqueting-house built in a garden,On which the spring’s chaste flowers take

delightTo cast their modest odours; when base lustWith all her powders, paintings, and best

pride,Is but a fair house built by a ditch side.

(WBW, 3.1.89-94)

Narrative parallels

Runaway marriages Forced marriages (attempted and actual) Failed attempts to lock women up Illicit sex leading to pregnancy Repentance and spiritual reawakening Abrupt change of tone and dramatic style at

end

Structured around significant communal ceremonies and rites of passage

Chaste Maid Celebrations for christening of Baby Allwit First attempted wedding of Moll and Touchwood Junior Off-stage marriage of Tim Yellowhammer and the ‘Welsh

gentlewoman’ ‘Funeral’ of Moll and Touchwood transformed into a wedding

Women Beware Women Annual solemn procession of the Duke, Cardinal and States of

Florence Duke’s banquet for Bianca, including the display of Isabella to the

Ward in song and dance Procession for the wedding of Bianca and the Duke, disrupted by

the Cardinal Wedding masque transformed into mass slaughter

Groups of characters interlinked by sex and money with one acting as a linchpin

Sir Walter Whorehound Father to Mistress Allwit’s children; maintains the Allwits Rival suitor to Moll Yellowhammer with Touchwood Junior Brings his Welsh ‘niece’ to marry off to Tim Yellowhammer Is heir to the Kixes unless they have children (provided by Touchwood Senior) Believes he’s killed Touchwood Junior in a duel

Livia Sister to Fabritio and Hippolito, aunt to Isabella, friend and collaborator with

Guardiano Brings Bianca and the Mother to her house so the Duke can ‘seduce’ the

former Arranges for her brother Hippolito to seduce her niece Isabella Persuades Isabella that her interests will be served by marrying Guardiano’s

Ward Seduces Leantio Arranges the final masque

Touchwood J. My knight, with a brace of footmen,

[aside] Is come, and brought his ewe-mutton to find

A ram at London; I must hasten it,

Or else pick a famine; her blood’s mine,

And that’s the surest. Well, knight, that choice spoil

Is only kept for me.(CM, 1.1.131-6)

Leantio Canst thou forget

[aside] The dear pains my love took? How it has watched

Whole nights together, in all weathers for thee […]

And then received thee from thy father’s window

Into these arms at midnight; when we embraced

As if we had been statues only made for’t […]

And kissed as if our lips had grown together.

(WBW, 3.2.248-50, 254-6, 258)

Yellowhammer The very posy mocks me to my face:

‘Love that’s wise

Blinds parents’ eyes!’

I thank your wisdom, sir, for blinding us;

We have good hope to recover our sight shortly;

In the meantime I will lock up this baggage

As carefully as my gold: she shall see

As little sun, if a close room or so

Can keep her from the light on’t.(CM, 3.1.35-43)

Leantio At the end of the dark parlour there’s a place

So artificially contrived for a conveyance,

No search could ever find it. When my father

Kept in for manslaughter, it was his sanctuary.

There will I lock my life’s best treasure up,

Bianca.(WBW, 3.1.243-8)

Sir Walter Why have you used me thus, unkind mistress?

Wherein have I deserved?

Yellowhammer […] Tomorrow morn,

As early as sunrise, we’ll have you joined.

Moll O, bring me death tonight, love-pitying fates […]

Sir Walter I never was so near my wish

As this chance makes me: ere tomorrow noon

I shall receive two thousand pound in gold

And a sweet maidenhead worth forty.(CM, 4.4.31-2, 35-7, 48-51)

Isabella By’r Lady, no misery surmounts a woman’s:

Men buy their slaves, but women buy their masters.

(WBW, 1.2.173-4)

‘Though the match may seeme meet in the parents eie, yet he may not force his childe thereto. […] I denie not that parents may vse all manner of faire meanes to moue their children to yeeld to that which they see good for them: but if they cannot moue them to yeeld, to referre the matter to God, and not against their childrens minds to force them. […] For the neerest bond of all is betwixt man and wife; […] man and wife must alwaies liue together: great reason therefore that at the first ioyning them together there be a mutuall liking of one another, lest euer after there be a perpetuall dislike.’

William Gouge

Of Domesticall Duties (1622), sig. Oo2v

‘Parents, destroy not your children by matching them to miserable riches.’

William Whately

A Care-Cloth: or a Treatise of the Cumbers and Troubles of Marriage (1624), sig. F5r

Angel (turn’d Diuell) Pride:

by thee I fellWhen heere on earth I dwelt

too’th pit of Hell:Yet spite of all thy Poysons,

I am faireNow in Gods eyes,

Women by me Beware.

Women Beware Women

Women, Beware Women

Women, beware! Women!

‘Robert Car Earle of SomersetAnd the Ladie Frances his wife’

Born Frances Howard, she was previously married to the Earl of Essex, whom she divorced for impotence after undergoing virginity tests; in 1616 pleaded guilty to causing her servant Anne Turner to poison Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower of London in 1613. The Somersets were imprisoned in the Tower until 1622.

George Villiers b. 1592

Knighted 1615Viscount Buckingham 1616Earl of Buckingham 1617Marquis of Buckingham 1618Duke of Buckingham 1623

Assassinated 1628

Frances Cokec. 1601-1645

1617 m. Sir John Villiers, Viscount Purbeck

Joseph Swetnam, author of the pamphlet The arraignment of lewd, idle, froward, and unconstant women (1615), appears in this play as ‘Swetnam, alias Misogynos’; in the epilogue he is ‘muzzled, hal’d in by Women’ to express his repentance to the women in the audience.

Misogynos.And Fortune, if thou be’ist a deity,Give me but opportunity that IMay all the follies of your sex declareThat henceforth men of women may

beware.

Swetnam the Woman-Hater, 1617-18

Duke Come, Bianca,

Of purpose sent into the world to show

Perfection once in woman; I’ll believe

Henceforward they have evr’y one a soul too,

’Gainst all the uncourteous opinions

That man’s uncivil rudeness ever held of ’em.

(WBW, 3.2.22-7)

Maudlin Have you played over all your old lessons o’the virginals?

Moll Yes.

Maudlin Yes, you are a dull maid alate, methinks you had need have somewhat to quicken your green sickness; do you weep? A husband. Had not such a piece of flesh been ordained, what had us wives been good for?

(CM, 1.1.1-7)

Mother Thy sight was never yet more precious to me;

Welcome with all the affection of a mother,

That comfort can express from natural love.

(WBW, 1.1.1-3)

Vanessa Kirby as Isabella, Harriet Walter as Livia National Theatre, 2010

Penelope Wilton as Livia, Peter Guinness as Guardiano, Susan Engel as

Mother/WidowRSC, 2006

Sure I thinkThou know’st the way to please me. I affectA passionate pleading ’bove an easy yielding,But never pitied any – they deserved none –That will not pity me. I can command,Think upon that.

(2.2.356-61)

RSC, 2006

Tim Pigott-Smith and Hayley Atwell

National Theatre, 2010

Duke This swerves a little from the argument though:

Look you, my lords!

(5.2.124-5)

Livia descends like Juno

IsabellaAnd after sighs, contrition’s truest odoursI offer to thy powerful deityThis precious incense […]

[The incense sends up a poisoned smoke.]

’Twill try your immortality ere ’t be long,I fear you’ll never get so nigh heaven again When you’re once down.

Artemisia GentileschiDanae (1612)

‘Throws flaming gold upon Isabella, who falls dead’

Sir Walter O, how my offences wrestle with my repentance!

It hath scarce breath;

Still my adulterous guilt hovers aloft,

And with her black wings beats down all my prayers

Ere they be half way up.(CM, 5.1.72-5)

Hippolito Lust and forgetfulness has been among us

And we are brought to nothing.

[…] man’s understanding

Is riper at his fall than all his life-time.

(WBW, 5.2.148-9, 154-5)

CardinalSin, what thou art these ruins show too piteously.Two kings on one throne cannot sit together,But one must needs down, for his title’s wrong;So where lust reigns, the prince cannot reign long.

RSC, 2006