Women Beware Women by Thomas Middleton

First produced: c. 1621-1627; first published, 1657

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Tragedy

Time of plot: Early seventeenth century

Locale: Florence, Italy

Principal characters

• Leantio, a Florentine clerk
• Bianca, his wife
• Fabricio, a Florentine gentleman
• Isabella, his daughter
• Livia, Fabricio’s sister
• Hippolito, brother of Livia and Fabricio
• The Duke of Florence,
• A Cardinal, the duke’s brother
• The Ward,
• Guardiano, his uncle and guardian

The Story:

Leantio, a Florentine merchant’s clerk, marries Bianca, a beautiful and well-born Venetian, and brings her to his mother’s house. On her arrival there, she responds graciously to his mother’s words of welcome and speaks of her love for Leantio. He, in turn, informs his mother of Bianca’s luxurious background and of his inability to equal it. He explains also that Bianca is a great prize who must be kept hidden from other men’s eyes. His mother fears that Bianca will be discontented with her new and poorer home.

In a richer house, Livia entertains her brother Fabricio, the father of Isabella, and Guardiano, the uncle of a rich and foolish boy called the Ward. They discuss the proposed marriage between the Ward and Isabella. Livia, protesting against loveless marriages, lectures Fabricio on man’s unfaithfulness and woman’s obedience and declares that she will never remarry. When Isabella is sent for, Fabricio declares that her uncle Hippolito will surely follow her in her married state because they are as inseparable as links in a chain. Isabella’s ideals, especially her ideas on marriage, are in marked contrast to the Ward’s foolishness and vulgarity. She dreads marriage to him and regards it as slavery. This is her explanation to Livia, who sends Hippolito to comfort her. At that time, Isabella’s conscious feelings toward her uncle are those of deep friendship. Unaware at the time of any sexual attraction toward him, she is horrified and sadly leaves him when he tells her he loves her as a man loves his wife.

When Leantio finally leaves Bianca at his mother’s house and returns to his work, Bianca weeps bitterly. She is distracted from her grief by the noise and excitement of the annual religious procession to the cathedral. Deeply impressed by the noble bearing of the duke of Florence, Bianca is sure that he notices her as she watches him passing by.

Meanwhile, Hippolito tells Livia of his love for Isabella and of her reaction, and Livia promises to procure Isabella as his mistress. When Isabella confides her unhappiness to Livia, her aunt takes the opportunity to tell her that Hippolito is not her uncle, that she is in fact the child of Fabricio’s wife by a Spanish nobleman. She insists, however, that Isabella keep this matter a secret, because Fabricio and Hippolito are ignorant of it. Thus Isabella welcomes Hippolito with a kiss when he returns and he marvels at Livia’s skill. Isabella decides that she will still marry the Ward to conceal her love affair with Hippolito.

Guardiano tells Livia that the duke of Florence is enamored of a girl he saw on the balcony of Leantio’s mother’s house. Livia undertakes to win her for the duke and summons Leantio’s mother for a game of chess. Under pressure, the mother admits that she has a daughter-in-law in her home, and Bianca is sent for. She is taken on a tour of the house by Guardiano, who thus leads her to the duke.

While the duke speaks of his passion for her, Bianca pleads for her honor, virtue, and safety. The duke, continuing his token pleading, intimates to Bianca that she does not have the power to refuse him. When she returns to the two chess players, Bianca is half pleased by the duke but also eager to have revenge on Livia.

At home, Bianca’s ensuing frustration and discontent infuriate her mother-in-law, who is glad that Leantio will soon return. On his arrival, Leantio anticipates an ecstatic reunion with his wife, but he is greeted coldly by Bianca and angrily repulsed. Before long, Bianca is sent for by the duke and goes to the palace with Leantio’s mother. Left alone, Leantio abandons himself to jealousy, but he fails to realize the extent of his betrayal until he, too, is summoned to dine with the duke.

When offered the command of a distant city, Leantio is as powerless to refuse as he is to disrupt the affair between his wife and her noble lover, and he is forced to stand by when Bianca, bored by the banquet, leaves with the duke.

Livia, who fell in love at first sight with Leantio, is determined to woo him from his grief. When she indirectly offers herself as his mistress, he accepts because of the wealth and luxury she promises. Some weeks later, Leantio visits Bianca in her apartment at the court, and they jeer at each other’s finery and new place in the world. Bianca tells the duke of her husband’s visit and discloses that he became Livia’s lover. Jealous of Leantio, the duke informs Hippolito, who, as the ruler expects, threatens to kill his sister’s lover to preserve publicly Livia’s honor.

The duke’s pleasure at the idea of Leantio’s death increases when his brother, the cardinal, threatens him with the fires of hell if he continues to live adulterously. Vowing that he will reform, he decides that with Leantio dead he can lawfully marry Bianca, so Leantio is murdered. Livia, finding Hippolito with her lover’s body is driven almost to madness by grief, fury, and malice. She betrays him and Isabella and admits that she lied to Isabella about her parentage to make her Hippolito’s mistress. Isabella, who transgressed, unlike the others, through ignorance, resolves to leave Hippolito and avenge herself by destroying Livia.

The separate revenges plotted by these people result in their own deaths. At a masque held ostensibly in honor of the duke’s marriage to Bianca, poisoned incense kills Isabella and Livia. Hippolito stabs himself, and Bianca has the duke poisoned and then drinks also from the poisoned cup.

Bibliography

Chakravorty, Swapan. Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Reassesses the cultural significance of Middleton’s plays, arguing that he was a pioneer of politically self-conscious theater. Chapter 6 is devoted to an analysis of Women Beware Women.

Dawson, Anthony B. “Women Beware Women and the Economy of Rape.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 27, no. 2 (Spring, 1987): 303-320. Argues that Middleton presents female characters as trapped in an economic hierarchy that reduces them to commodities for male use. This presentation is complicated by a need to maintain a conventional Elizabethan perception of women as naturally corrupt.

Holmes, David M. “Women Beware Women and The Changeling.” In The Art of Thomas Middleton. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1970. Places the play within the context of Middleton’s late work. Asserts that Bianca is vulnerable to seduction because of a repressive upbringing that does not prepare her for a morally corrupt world.

Huebert, Ronald. “An Art That Has No Name: Thomas Middleton.” In The Performance of Pleasure in English Renaissance Drama. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Examines how English Renaissance dramatists, including Middleton, pursue and create pleasure, both the erotic pleasure presented onstage and the aesthetic pleasure experienced by readers and theatergoers.

Kistner, A. L., and M. K. Kistner. “Women Beware Women: Will, Authority, and Fortune.” In Middleton’s Tragic Themes. New York: Peter Lang, 1984. Asserts that Middleton insists upon the individual moral responsibility of his characters. Characters ignore their awareness of sin to satisfy their overriding will, thus bringing on catastrophe.

Taylor, Gary, and John Lavagnino, eds. Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture: A Companion to the Collected Works. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. This companion to a complete collection of Middleton’s works contains numerous essays that place the writer in his literary and cultural context. Also provides introductory essays and textual notes for all of his writings.

Wigler, Stephen. “Parent and Child: The Pattern of Love in Women Beware Women.” In“Accompaninge the Players”: Essays Celebrating Thomas Middleton, 1580-1980, edited by Kenneth Friedenreich. New York: AMS Press, 1983. Examines three dominant love relationships of the play, which demonstrate a similar parent-child incest pattern and explain the stylistic shift in the final act. Suggests that a possible source of the play lies in Middleton’s biography.