No Wit, No Help Like a Woman's
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No Wit, No Help Like a Woman's is a Jacobean stage play, a tragicomedy written by Thomas Middleton. Consensus scholarship dates the authorship of the play to ca. 1611, though it was not published until 1657.
The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on Sept. 9, 1653 by the bookseller Humphrey Moseley. Moseley printed the first edition four years later; both the Register entry and the title page of the first edition attribute the play to "Tho. Middleton."
In the text of the play, the character Weatherwise repeatedly refers to almanacs, specifically to almanacs for the year 1611, yielding the obvious plausible date for the play. It was probably performed in 1612.[1]
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[edit] Synopsis
At the beginning of the play, we learn that Sir Oliver Twilight, a rich old knight, has paid a ransom to save his wife, Lady Twilight, and his daughter from captivity. Three months before, his son Philip mischievously spent the ransom while he was in Antwerp. There he met a young woman named Grace and brought her home, claiming her to be his long lost sister. He also told his father that his mother was dead. Therefore, Philip and his lover, Mistress Grace, both live in his father's house where they keep their true relationship hidden.
Philip's friend Sandfield is in love with Mistress Jane, daughter of Master Sunset. In order not to arouse Sir Oliver's suspicion, they pretend they are in love with each other's mistresses. Savourwit, Sir Oliver's man, who is also Philip's confident, knows the story of the lost ransom and Grace's false identity. A Dutch Merchant reveals to Savourwit that Lady Twilight is still alive and that he has seen her. In a hilarious scene, Savourwit pretends he can speak Dutch and mistranslates what is said to him by the merchant's boy to Sir Oliver in order not to reveal the truth of the lost ransom and the lie concerning Lady Twilight's death.
Lady Goldenfleece is a rich widow who attracts many suitors: Sir Gilbert Lambston, Master Weatherwise (so-called because of his devotion to almanacs), Master Pepperton, and Master Overdone. Mistres Low-Water wants to take her revenge on Lady Goldenfleece who ruined her husband, Master Low-Water. She disguises herself as a gallant gentleman in order to woo her and then humiliate her by revealing her sex after they have been married. Her husband, Master Low-Water, takes part in the plot by pretending to be her servant.
Master Beveril, Mistress Low-Water's brother, rescues and brings Lady Twilight back to London. Philip asks for her forgiveness, telling her that he has spent her ransom and that he has been pretending Grace was his sister. Lady Twilight forgives him, and claims Grace to be her lost daughter when she discovers her name and a ring she had fastened to Grace's ear as a child. Lady Twilight asks Philip to repent for his sins and wants him to stop loving Grace. Philip is thunderstruck by the news of his incestuous affair with his sister and turns melancholy. Lady Goldenfleece soon falls in love with Mistress Low-Water, cross-dressed as a man, and decides to marry her. She invites her other suitors—Lambston, Weatherwise, Pepperton and Overdone—to the wedding banquet; they perform a masque mocking her and her sudden infatuation for her new suitor. Mistress Low-Water reveals her identity by showing her breasts and then manages in a far-fetched twist to unite her brother Master Beveril with Lady Goldenfleece.
Lady Goldenfleece reveals that fourteen years before, while Grace was nursed by Master Sunset's wife, she had been exchanged with Jane, the Sunsets' daughter, because they feared they would fall into poverty and hoped their own daughter would be better off with the Twilights. Philip and Grace's love has become legitimate.
The main theme of the play is the reunion of a broken family whose members had long been separated, which was a popular Elizabethan plot, as in Shakespeare's Pericles or The Winter's Tale among numerous other plays.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Logan and Smith, p. 69.
[edit] References
- Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
- Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The Popular School: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1975.
[edit] External links
- [1] - Online version of the play
