SOURCE: "Lust and Avarice in the Comedies: A Chaste Maid in Cheapside," in The Lust Motif in the Plays of Thomas Middleton, Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1973, pp. 45-54.

Baines analyzes the characters' "habitual exploitation of sex for financial gain" in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside.

I think most critics who have given much thought to A Chaste Maid in Cheapside would agree that it is one of the most successful creations of multiple-plot structure in the English language. Because of the complex relationships of characters and their pursuits, there is little agreement as to exactly how many distinct plots and subdivisions of the same plot exist. Richard Levin [in "The Four Plots of A Chaste Maid in Cheapside," Review of English Studies, XVI (1965)] presents a good argument for seeing the action of the play as four distinct plots: (1) Moll and Touchwood Jr.'s romance crossed...