The Roaring Girl (New Mermaids)

The Roaring Girl (New Mermaids)

• Roaring Girl By Middleton Thomas Dekker Thomas Cook Elizabeth EDT

This Jacobean city comedy is a curiosity in that it presents a<br/>real-life character, the notorious cross-dresser Moll Frith, who<br/>probably was among the first audiences of 'her' play before she was<br/>taken up for public misconduct. Middleton and Dekker's 'roaring girl'<br/>may outrage her society with her pipe, bluster and swagger, but she<br/>turns out to be the moral centre of the play. Her code of honour leads<br/>her to call the bluff on rogues and conspicuous consumers, to thrash a<br/>hypocritical gallant in a duel, and to act as go-between for the young<br/>lovers thwarted by parental tyranny. This wry dramatisation of female<br/>deviancy exposing male ineffectuality is as much to the point today as<br/>it was in King James's England. An appendix helps the modern reader to<br/>appreciate the canting terms used by the low-life characters.