SOURCE: Morgan-Russell, Simon. “Structures of Adultery: Otway's The Souldiers Fortune and Restoration Domestic Architecture.” ELH 65, no. 2 (summer 1998): 347-61.

In the following essay, Morgan-Russell discusses public and private spaces in The Souldiers Fortune, concluding that the plot, which concerns adultery, is meant to offer political lessons.

The subject of adultery in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England has seen a good deal of scholarly interest in recent criticism, particularly as the relationships between the participants in the adulterous transaction have been theorized. But few investigations have considered that the adulterous liaison requires a space for its performance: Samuel Pepys, who has become an emblematic figure in the late seventeenth century for sexual “carrying-on,” records in his diary that his frequent fits of adultery took place in a variety of locations—the houses of his mistresses while their husbands were away, carriages, boats, private rooms in Lambeth alehouses, his own dining-room, even...