Ben Jonson’s Epicoene is a decidedly socially conservative play written and set in Renaissance London. As well as criticising lifelong singleness by ridiculing the life of his protagonist Morose, a misanthrope who attempts to marry only for the purpose of disinheriting his nephew, Jonson also advocates for male headship in romantic relationships through his censorious portrayal of the female-led Otter household. From his depictions of the consequences of male impotence in a heterosexual marriage, it appears Jonson’s intent is to both legitimise and present patriarchy as natural. By contrast, Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling delegitimises all claims to natural hierarchy in relationships by depicting the arbitrariness of hierarchy through the fluctuating power dynamics between masters and servants. Beatrice-Joanna is a Spanish noblewoman who commissions her father’s servant Deflores to murder the man she is engaged to but does not love (Alonzo) so that she can be with the man she does love (Alsemero). Having achieved this, in an implied rape scene Deflores redeems his ‘payment’ from Beatrice Joanna, who then arranges a bed-trick using her servant Diaphanta to convince Alsemero, now her husband, of her virginity. In spite of Beatrice-Joanna’s desperation for hierarchy in relationships to be indissoluble, The Changeling exposes the fragility of hierarchy by illustrating the ways in which the limitations imposed by it can be circumvented, demonstrated by Deflores and Diaphanta’s transgressions and in Beatrice’s own transgression to be with Alsemero.
Epicoene is primarily a satire of the notion that we can fashion our own identities and Jonson exploits this trend in Jacobean London society to decry forms of self-fashioning that disturb conventional ways of being. Although he experiments with the idea of gender expression, subverting gender stereotypes in the masculinity of the collegiate women, the effeminacy of Dauphine, Clerimont and Truewit, and in Epicoene’s androgyny, ultimately these subversions are used to assert the idea that men and women, and their homosocial and heterosocial relationships are to be one way. The primary way he depicts this conservatism is through his negative characterisation of female headship in relationships, embodied in the relationship between Tom Otter and his wife. By exaggerating Mistress Otter’s power over her husband to present her as a grotesque, domineering figure, Jonson reinforces the idea that female authority in relationships is unnatural, shown by the effects of her manliness on Tom Otter’s identity and relationships with other men. Because Tom Otter’s wife is notorious for berating and physically abusing him in order to subdue him — so much so that he repeats the deferential term “under correction” when speaking to her — he is the source of derision among the men who laugh at his emasculation and label him “his wife’s subject”.1 This is in contrast to the suggestion that male violence towards women is not only unproblematic, but also desirable as expressed in Truewit’s statement that “A man should not doubt to overcome any woman…| Though they strive, they would be overcome” (IV.1.67, 77). This distinction implies that Mistress Otter’s violence towards her husband is so troubling not because it is an example of unabashed domestic violence, but because it is a perversion of the direction that domestic violence between husband and wife should flow. Tom Otter’s humiliation is thus located in his being the victim of not just another man’s or even another woman’s violence, but specifically that of his wife, and by inviting us to revel in the gallants’ humiliation of him, Jonson presents it as the just punishment for his failure to dominate her.
The undermining effect of this humiliation is amplified by the weight given to male homosociality in the play. Morose’s storyline is encircled by the remaining male characters’ bonding, which is demonstrated to be predicated on misogyny by the centrality of contempt for women in their conversations, revealed in statements such as “Wives are nasty,/ sluttish animals” (IV.2.50-1) and that women’s actions are “governed by crude opinion, without reason or cause” (IV.6.58-9). By exploiting the male fear of emasculation among their peers to show that Mistress Otter’s overly authoritative nature has a detrimental effect on Tom Otter’s ability to relate to other men, Jonson emphasises female authority in a heterosexual relationship as something of a nature as destructive as it is transgressive. Jonson instead posits Morose’s relationship with Epicoene, were it not false in the warped intentions underpinning it and her being a man, as the exemplar of heterosexual relationship dynamics.
Although Morose does marry, Jonson presents him as aberrant because his desire for a wife arises from the desire to disinherit his nephew rather than for companionship. Roger Holdsworth argues that Jonson is averse to the idea that a silent woman is a good woman, and his ridiculing of Morose reflects this. However, in the gallants’ demonisation of the collegiate women for their excessive talking and Truewit’s comment that Epicoene’s silence is “this rare virtue” (II.4.87) in woman and is therefore to be celebrated, Jonson does exalt silence in women, reinforcing the view that women who voice their thoughts are monstrous. Rather than being critical of the notion of desiring a silent wife altogether, what Jonson is critical of is that Morose’s desire for a silent wife is born out of his antisociality rather than exclusively out of the desire to subjugate a woman to his authority. Morose indiscriminately seeks submission from all those around him, demonstrated by his own admission that “All discourses but my own afflict me” (II.1.3), his cries to “Bar my doors! Bar my doors!” (III.5.31) at the suggestion of the collegiates entering his home, and his characterisation of feasting, revelry, and discourse with others as “my torment, my torment” (III.5.51). By emphasising Morose’s distress at his home being used as a meeting place, which subverts its intended purpose (to Morose) as a sanctuary from social interaction, Jonson highlights misanthropy as the source of Morose’s earlier joy at the prospect of a silent wife. It is this lack of desire to dominate a woman and his failure to do so that makes Morose so detestable, illustrated by Jonson’s conflation of anti-patriarchy with impotence as after a barrage of allusions to his ‘defective’ masculinity, Morose is eventually forced to humiliatingly admit that “I am no man” (V.4.41).
Although Jonson also satirises the gallant’s effeminacy and La Foole and Jack Dawe’s performances of hypermasculinity, with the latter pair insisting that they both ‘deflowered’ the male Epicoene (“Sir John had her maidenhead”) (V.1.81), their self-fashioning, unlike Morose’s, is presented as acceptable because it upholds patriarchal values. This is reflected in the reality that they enjoy a happy or neutral ending while Morose’s stage presence ends with the looking forward to his funeral (V.4.200-201). Through this contrast in their fates, Jonson highlights the propriety of the other men’s lifestyles and reinforces the illegitimacy of Morose’s disposition, furthered by his association with death.
Rather than celebrating hierarchy as Epicoene appears to do, The Changeling challenges the legitimacy of hierarchy, using the motif of service to illustrate its complicated nature. As daughter of the governor of Alicante, Beatrice-Joanna wields power over Deflores and Diaphanta but is also bound by the ways of her patriarchal society. This is demonstrated by the ruin implied by the discovery of premarital virginity loss in her worry about what would become of her were she found unchaste on her wedding night.2 By recruiting Diaphanta for her bed-trick, Beatrice is ultimately reliant on Diaphanta for her redemption in Alsemero’s eyes, subverting the power dynamic between the two women, while her ability to appropriate another woman’s body to maintain her dignity illuminates her seniority over Diaphanta. This is reinforced by the implication that being found ‘ruined’ would be more damaging for Beatrice because her body, as a nobleman, is inherently worth more than Diaphanta’s, a servant. Beatrice’s turning to Diaphanta is represented as demeaning by the indirectness with which she broaches the subject, having to pretend to fear consummating her marriage to introduce Diaphanta to her scheme: “I will give a thousand ducats to that woman | Would try what my fear were” (IV.1.73). This is in contrast to her characteristic discourteousness to those lower than herself, particularly Deflores. That she has to demean herself to uncharacteristic politeness to evade the devaluation that would come from an unsuccessful virginity test reveals her vulnerability in a system designed for the benefit of her class, demonstrating the fragility of her high position. As Deflores’ implied rape of Beatrice compels her to succumb to devising to use another woman’s body in order to reclaim control over her life, Middleton shows that ultimately, all aspects of womanhood have to be subordinated to the demands of patriarchy for survival, undermining the sturdiness of Beatrice’s claim to social supremacy. Through the effect that Deflores’ act of rape, a dramatic manifestation of patriarchal power, has on the direction of service in Beatrice’s relationship to Diaphanta, Jonson thus emphasises the subordination of Beatrice’s status as a noble to her status as a woman in a patriarchal society, revealing the precarity of the play’s hierarchical relationships.
That hierarchy can be easily overcome is emphasised by the fact that Beatrice’s undoing is by her own hand. It is the degradation caused by her moral bankruptcy that empowers Deflores to rape her, signifying her debasement to the working class. This is demonstrated by Deflores’ insistence that Beatrice “settle” herself in what the act of conspiring Alonzo’s murder has made her: “You’re the deed’s creature: by that name | You lost your first condition” (III.3.137-38) and his insistence that in conscience, “you’ll find me there your equal” (III.3.132-27). By repeating that through her degeneracy in asking for somebody to be murdered she no longer has a valid claim to her noble status, Middleton suggests that Beatrice’s immorality sanctions Deflores’ sexual violence towards her as it lowers her to his rank, making her metaphorically indistinguishable from Diaphanta whose body is able to be discarded carelessly. The dismantling of the social boundary between Beatrice and Deflores is represented clearly as arising from her degeneracy through Deflores’ careful observation of their class distinction prior to her commissioning him to murder Alonzo. Before she is reduced to his status by her own immorality, the closest Deflores can get to Beatrice-Joanna is looking only because being her father’s servant, it would be a social transgression to attempt to touch her sexually, shown by his self-consolation “I’ll please my self with sight | Of her, at all opportunities” (I.1.98-99). That he is therefore licensed to not only physically join himself to her through sexual violence but also detain her in a closet in the play’s climax shows that this hierarchical distinction has been truly overturned.
Michael Neill in his introduction to the play asserts that Deflores is one of many Jacobean villains whose treachery is derived from his resentment at his low social status; Deflores is indeed hostile to the implications of his servility, shown by his contempt at Beatrice’s suggestion that he could be placated with money as “verminous fellows” (III.3.64) can be. His rape of Beatrice therefore represents his eclipsing his ascribed status, shown by the zeal with which he tells Vermandero that the pleasure of Beatrice’s body was “so sweet to me | That I have drunk up all, left none behind | For any man to pledge me” (V.3.169-171). Deflores’ directness here, compared to the servility with which he previously addressed Vermandero, suggests that by violating his daughter in such a way, he has both lowered Vermandero’s status and elevated his own. By highlighting that Beatrice-Joanna is toppled from her position by her own depravity in plotting murder to secure her desired future, Middleton and Rowley illuminate the fragility of hierarchy and undermine the Calvinist notion that status was correlated to one’s virtue. This is furthered by Beatrice eventually being symbolically outranked by those who begin in service to her as in the play’s final moments she is referred to as “that broken rib of mankind” (V.3.146), her reduction to a defective body part underscoring her degradation. By contrast, Diaphanta is referred to as a “gentlewoman” (V.1.116) and Deflores’ label of “villain” (V.3.2), while negative, still recognises his humanity rather than identifying him as a broken bone.
Through Beatrice-Joanna’s degradation as a result of the interplay between her relationships with Alonzo, Alsemero, Deflores, and Diaphanta, Middleton and Rowley challenge the sustainability of hierarchy by depicting it as neither fixed nor virtuous. Conversely, in Epicoene,Jonson uses the responses to Tom and Mistress Otter’s relationship and Morose’s abject impotence to uphold traditionally structured relationships by suggesting that having a domineering wife and the lack of desire for womanly company are equally problematic. By ending Epicoene with Morose’s suffering and the image of death, his punishment for having the ‘wrong’ predilections, Jonson underscores his implicit idealisation of sociality and male-led heterosexual relationships as the healthiest way to live.
