New Mermaids
2 total works
A hilarious city comedy by the authors of A Mad World, My Masters and The Shoemaker's Holiday. Sebastian has a problem. He's in love with a girl but his father won't agree to their marriage because her family are too poor. In desperation he turns to the one person who can help him, the fearless and feisty 'roaring girl' Moll Cutpurse. In a London fuelled by greed and desire, the charismatic, cross-dressing heroine Moll has the world wrapped around her little finger. Cutting a joyously independent path through the underhand scheming and petty vendettas around her, Moll proves more than a match for any man. This edition of The Roaring Girl was published alongside its RSC revival in 2014.
Written for the adult players at the open-air Swan theatre in 1613, this master-piece of Jacobean city comedy signals its ironic nature even in the title: chaste maids, like most other goods and people in London's busiest commercial area, are likely to be fake. Money is more important than either happiness or honour; and the most coveted commodities to be bought with it are sex and social prestige. Middleton interweaves the fortunes of four families, who either seek to marry their children off as profitably as possible, to stop having any more for fear of poverty, or to acquire some in order to keep their property in the family. Most prosperous is the husband who pimps his wife to a rich knight and lets him support the household with his alimony. Like many early modern critics of London's enormous growth, this play warned: the city is a monster that lives off the money the country produces.