This play is such a stew of interesting sexual politics, breeches-part sword fights, yard-arm jokes, and clunky plotting that I could write about it for a week! But this is a day-and-done project, so, here goes:
The title of Middleton & Dekker’s play refers to Moll Cutpurse, the alias of the real Mary Frith, who dresses and acts like a man, and is rumored to be a tavern-going, whoring, hell-raising thief (a cutpurse being a thief who cuts purses to steal them). The bare-bones plot is the marriage of Sebastian Wengrave to his true love Mary Fitzallard (yes, a different Mary), which is blocked by his father, Sir Alexander. Sebastian fakes being in love with Moll to drive his father crazy and make Mary look better in comparison.
Problematic Plotting
It sounds like a recipe to mock gender-nonconforming Moll, but though Sir Alexander describes her as “a creature nature hath brought forth to mock the nature of women,” the play is sympathetic to Moll. (I use she/her pronouns here because that’s what Moll uses, for what it’s worth, though she does also go by Jack at times.) She’s by far the best drawn character in the , and it’s fun to see her swaggering, fighting, and generally not giving a shit what anyone thinks of her. Weirdly, though, for such a larger than life character, on the page, at least, she’s not a particularly dominant protagonist.
The marriage plot isn’t her idea, nor is it for her benefit. The other characters often talk about her and debate her nature, but she only appears in a few key scenes like the marriage at the end (it is a comedy so of course there’s a marriage). Besides that, she mainly drifts through episodes that, while entertaining, barely advance the plot--such as it is.
Also, at least half the play is B-plot run rampant, showing the sexual betrayals, reversals, and eventual reconciliations of a trio of shopkeeper’s wives, their husbands, and the gallants the wives cheat with. Only some of these characters are even loosely connected to the main plot. The result is a play that’s weirdly decentralized and kind of aimless, although the marriage which is sort of bolted onto Acts I and V kind of bookends it--barely.
Bawdy, Boys, and Bridewell
While the plot is creaky, I will say this: B-plot and Moll plot alike get a lot of codpiece and purse-net jokes...the most I can remember reading in a play, although this is the first of many plays I’m reading for this particular project, so maybe I’m just easily surprised right now in my purity.
I’m sure that with all the bawdy, an actor could have a ball playing Moll, especially as her masculine presentation becomes increasingly overt. At first she appears in a man’s jacket wearing a sword and a woman’s divided riding skirt, and goes by Moll; but by the end of the play she’s had pants made and people mostly call her Jack; she bulls her way through scenes and has a couple sword fights, including one duel. There’s one scene in particular where Moll is getting fitted for a pair of trousers that has some truly first-rate dick and (vagina!) jokes. I’m sure that, combined with the titillation of a breeches part, would be really fun to see onstage.
More exciting still, while it would have been boys or men acting the women’s part in this play when it was acted in Jacobean days, but apparently the real Mary Frith played herself for one performance--and was sent to Bridewell prison for her trouble. It must have been pretty amazing to see, in 1611, 50 years before women were actually allowed to act onstage.
The writing itself is fine, if not sparkling. There are a lot of good bits in it, and the idea of appearances vs. reality gets a lot of examination throughout the play, and not just in regards to Moll. Despite the common idea of the time that outward beauty reflected inward wholesomeness, there are a great many suggestions that appearances are deceiving in this play.
The line that most stuck has one of the disillusioned shopkeepers saying: “What’s this whole world but a gilt rotten pill?” I read this as 2019 was just ending and it seemed like a perfect summation of our times, even if the quote is more than 400 years old.
You get the sense that appearances are interpretations that show more about the eye of the beholder than anything else. Goshawk, who is a hunter of women (hence his name), says “I never knew so much flesh and such nimbleness put together.” Laxton, who is all lust despite his name, describes her as a “like fat eel” who slips between the fingers and says “She might first cuckold the husband and then make him do as much for the wife.”
Despite this being Moll’s general reputation, the play goes out of its way to show that Moll is neither a slut nor a thief. The play tortuously explains that she’s only called cutpurse because she associated with thieves as a youth, and, in fact, while she’s no innocent, she’s chaste. Like Queen Elizabeth I, who’d just died, you can only get away with living a “male” life if you’re a virgin (at least virginal). I’m not sure how it plays on stage, but there’s so much evidence that Moll lives in that world--there’s a whole scene where she competes with actual thiefs in a sort of contest of thieves’ cant--that if I were staging it, I might want to play it that the parts where Moll denies her Cutpurse name were played with a fair amount of irony.
A Queer Reading
It’s hard as a modern reader to know what to make of these scenes that were surely written to make Moll acceptable to Jacobean audiences. I’d love to take more time next time I read and write about this play to think about Moll from a queer perspective. Is it sad that to be allowed to live a traditionally masculine life Moll has to give up sexuality altogether, or is she an early asexual heroine? It’s not exactly suggested that she sees herself as a man, so I really don’t know if you’d call her a transman, but even as a cis guy I can see how you might read and stage it that way, too.
So what seems disappointing at first--that to be free, Moll is limited to being a virgin--might be seen differently with a little more thought. I only have so much time in this play-a-day project, but there’s clearly more to think about here.
More definitely meh are the disappointing ends of the shopkeepers’ love triangles, in which everyone forgives everyone else (even including the smarmy gallants), and all the wives go back to their husbands. It is a comedy, but the play would be far more interesting with a Malvolio or two in it, snarling and fuming in the background of the inevitable orgy of forgiveness that surrounds marriages in this kind of play.
What’s not disappointing is that Moll stays true to herself. She ends the play as she begins it--if anything she’s more committed to living life her own unique way. Rarely for a play from this era, the protagonist escapes marriage at the end. And that’s kind of great.
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