Yes to all of this! I wonder what role Uter’s costume plays as well–from Joan’s description, we’ve been told to expect a man with ‘most rich attire,’ a feather in his hat (and ‘excellent hangers,’ ha ha etc) – does Uter walk on stage matching the description? And he gives forty or so lines of Petrarchan-ish yearning before suddenly becoming…[Read more]

One of the things I find so interesting about 2.1 is the knife-edge space between comedy and violence — that’s present in so much clowning, of course, but I think that Joan’s predicament perhaps brings it into relief for me in a slightly different way. Really interesting to think about in relation to Dave’s reminder that the Clown and Joan are a…[Read more]

I’m just catching up with everyone’s comments on Act One – Act Two certainly accelerates the plot, with an abrupt pivot into magical rather than romantic/political territory.

Joan Go-too’t is reminding me of the Jailer’s Daughter from Two Noble Kinsmen – perhaps primarily just because she is apparently a working class woman cruelly rejected by a…[Read more]

Eoin, that point you make about the similarities with Middleton’s asides is one that (from memory???) Dave explores in his book on Middleton & Rowley’s collaborations — he makes a very convincing argument that their collaborative work influences the way that they write as solo playwrights, too, with each picking up some stylistic bits and pieces…[Read more]

Pete, thank you for bringin up the messy quarto — it’s actually one of my favourite things about this play, and somehow I feel like the hot mess of its 1662 printing matches the wackiness of the play’s contents. I also like the confusion it creates around asides, and that Aurelius speech you’ve quoted is a great example. What’s everyone hearing?…[Read more]

Thanks for that important context, Dave — I was trying to figure out the best space to highlight the suspicious attribution on the title-page!

Really glad so many of you are as intrigued by Artesia and her epic entrance as I am. It feels like we get a lot more women and kinds of women in these first two scenes than in most plays I can think of?…[Read more]

Welcome all! This is shaping up to be a great crew 🙂

Just a quick update to say that Charlene has very kindly created a clean PDF copy of the transcription text, so that it’s MUCH easier to read. She’s a star! You can now find that under ‘Files’ above.

Looking forward to diving into Act 1 next week!

Ooh Susanne, if you like genre, you’re going to have a LOT of fun with this play! XD

Hello! My name is Sally. I’ve never read this play before, but I’m interested in early modern drama and its afterlives.

My work is on archives of mostly-Shakespeare performances since the Restoration–I’ve worked on performance photography, and I’m currently working on a project with the Royal Collections and trying to think about letters,…[Read more]