Ladies Rampant: Thomas Middleton's Two New Playes in the English Republic

Abstract

abstract:This essay examines the joint publication of Thomas Middleton's More Dissemblers besides Women (1614) and Women Beware Women (1621) as Two New Playes in protectorate England. Scholars have highlighted these Jacobean plays' sympathetic treatment of female characters and Middleton's interest in the plight of women generally. When these two plays were published together in 1657, however, their depiction of gender-based hierarchies gained new meaning and significance. Instead of critiquing patriarchal oppression, the plays helped to define the republican body politic as exclusively masculine, promoting a patriarchal model of republican governance at a time of unprecedented political participation among women.