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3.15 AVERAGE
3.15 AVERAGE
It’s just okay, the beginning and part of the middle were funny but the ending lost me and could have been stronger.
This play was… meh… nothing like Shakespeare, it did have its good qualities, but some of it was just a bit boring. The prose was annoying and didn’t have any kind of flair to it. The storyline was good and intriguing however the way it was played out didn’t live up to its potential.
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
As far as Early Modern dramas go, Thomas Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside is one of the funnier city comedies I have read, easily rivalling those of Thomas Dekker or Ben Jonson. It is set in London in the early 17th century and can largely be summarised as a Jacobean comedy that deals with (w)holesaling, bawdy houses and whores - to paraphrase the title of Jean Howard's third chapter in 'Theater of a City' (2009) - while also acknowledging different types of motherhood and parental love or lack thereof. Contrary to popular belief, this play uses brothels not as a place of women's social decline but, in fact, the attainment of financial security and freedom. Without going into any details, I would highly recommend this play to anyone looking for a comic refuge from everyday life.
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Innuendos, bawdy wordplay, and fake deaths... that's it. Middleton's good, but Shakespeare remains the king of Early Modern drama.
This play is so entirely ridiculous it's almost like reading a Monty Python sketch. Would dearly love to see this staged in door-slamming farcical style. What a riot.
This is a play that I had to read for my English literature course. I found it confusing; partly due to my struggles with the language of the time and also in part to the many different storylines and sub plots. There is a lot of characters all with very different agendas and it definitely took some time to understand what was happening. The themes were interesting and once I began to understand the language more I gained an application for the irony to them.
I probably missed 90% of the innuendos in this play, tbh.
