SOURCE: “Play-making, Domestic Conduct, and the Multiple Plot in The Roaring Girl,” in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 27, No. 2, Spring 1987, pp. 249-66.

In the following essay, Comensoli contends that the three plots of The Roaring Girl together “convey the concern at the heart of the play with the degeneration of marriage and the family, a tension sustained in the antithesis between the household (consistently portrayed as the seat of spiritual and emotional stasis and confinement) and the city (the hub of multifariousness and freedom).”

I

Moll Cutpurse, the central character of Dekker and Middleton's The Roaring Girl (c. 1608-1611), is based on the notorious roarerMary Frith who frequented the Fortune Theater in man's apparel. Mary was described by a contemporary as “a very Tomrig or Rumpscuttle” who “sported only in boys' play and pastime,” scorned girlish endeavors such as “sewing or stitching,” and showed “rude inclinations.”¹ While...