Women Beware Women

Date

The date of authorship of the play is deeply uncertain. Scholars have estimated its origin anywhere from 1612 to 1627; 1623–24 has been plausibly suggested. The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 9 September 1653 by the bookseller Humphrey Moseley, along with two other Middleton plays, More Dissemblers Besides Women and No Wit, No Help Like a Woman's. In 1657 Moseley published Women Beware Women together with More Dissemblers in an octavo volume titled Two New Plays. Both the Register entry and the first edition's title page assign Women Beware Women to Middleton — an attribution which has never been seriously questioned and which is accepted by the scholarly consensus. No performances of the play in its own era are known. The octavo text of the play is prefaced by a commendatory poem by Nathaniel Richards, author of The Tragedy of Messalina (published 1640).

Thomas Dekker's play Match Me in London (written c. 1612, but printed in 1631) has a plot that is strongly similar to Women Beware, though with a happy ending rather than a tragic conclusion.

Plot Synopsis

Women Beware Women tells the story of Bianca, a woman who escapes from her rich home to elope with the poor Leantio. Fearful and insecure, Leantio requires that his mother lock Bianca up while he is away. While locked up, the Duke of Florence spots Bianca in a window and attempts to woo her with the help of Livia, a widow. When Leantio returns he discovers that Bianca has been corrupted and no longer loves him because he lacks wealth and fortune. Hippolito, Livia's brother, is tormented because he is in love with his niece Isabella. Isabella returns the love to her uncle, but to keep their relationship a secret Livia encourages Isabella to marry the Ward, a young heir. Busy putting together illegitimate relationships, Livia discovers that she is also able to love again and as a result, she seeks the love of Leantio. However, as affairs and relationships are exposed, one of the bloodiest Jacobean tragedies is created.

Characters

Chess

The device of the chess game exploited by Middleton in Women Beware has an obvious commonality with his own A Game at Chess — but the same chess-game device also appears in John Fletcher's play The Spanish Curate, which was acted in 1622. Here again, scholars are divided as to which play preceded and influenced which. It is also possible that both writers independently derived the chess device from the same source. T. S. Eliot, a student of Jacobean drama, refers to the Women Beware Women chess game in The Waste Land, Part II, line 137.

Reception

Little is known of the play's performances and reception in Middleton's time; Nathaniel Richards, who wrote a preface to the 1653 edition, stated that he had seen it, but no other records of performance survive. According to the Database of Early English Playbooks, the King's Men was the first company to put on the production.

For modern critics, Women Beware Women has regularly been paired with The Changeling as constituting Middleton's two noteworthy late achievements in the genre of tragedy — though Women Beware has usually been judged the lesser of the two works. The bloody masque that concludes the play has been called a "ridiculous holocaust." With growing critical attention over the years, however, the estimation of Women Beware Women has intensified; the play is now judged to be among Middleton's greatest works. "Women Beware Women displays Middleton's maturest understanding of the relation of power to desire, and of political culture to civil society."

Revivals

The play was never revived in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, but productions became relatively common after the 1950s. The most recent major production was at the Olivier stage of the Royal National Theatre, London; it was directed by Marianne Elliott and starred Harriet Walter as Livia and Vanessa Kirby as Isabella. This production was met with very favorable reviews.

Adaptation

A modern adaptation by Howard Barker at the Royal Court Theatre in 1986, in which the first two-thirds of Middleton's play were preserved but the ending was entirely revamped; among other changes, Sordido rapes Bianca before her wedding. Barker stated that he was rejecting Middleton's Jacobean Puritanism, writing in his programme note that "Middleton says lust leads to the grave. I say desire alters perception ... Middleton knew the body was the source of politics. He did not know it was also the source of hope."

A musical adaptation is being workshopped ahead of performances in May 2017 with students of the Single Honours Musical Theatre course at University of Chichester.