SOURCE: van Heertum, Cis. “A Hostile Annotation of Rachel Speght's A Mouzell for Melastomus (1617).” English Studies 68, no. 6 (December 1987): 490-96.

In the following essay, van Heertum describes the misogynist annotations found in an early copy of Speght's A Muzzle for Melastomus, which the critic maintains give an idea of how Speght's defense of women might have infuriated many seventeenth-century men.

Under the pseudonym of Thomas Tel-Troth a misogynist pamphlet was published in 1615 entitled The Araignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward and Unconstant Women. The pamphlet was reprinted in the same year, on which occasion the author's real name was revealed as Joseph Swetnam. Two further reprints followed in 1616 and 1617.¹ Although in his first dedicatory epistle Swetnam claimed that his attack was aimed only at women as defined in the title, the pamphlet is in effect a diatribe against women in general, and presents a rambling discussion of their pride, extravagance...