This Norton Critical Edition of Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker's
The Roaring Girl is based on the text from English Renaissance Drama:
A Norton Anthology. It is accompanied by generous explanatory
annotations, five illustrations, and a detailed introduction.
"Contexts" is thematically arranged to include almost all known
documents from the period concerning Mary Frith (aka Moll Cutpurse),
among them records of her court appearances, letters recounting the
same, and her last will. Also reprinted are significant passages from
her purported 1662 "autobiography," The Life and Death of Mrs. Mary
Frith. While of dubious veracity, the "autobiography" is useful for
comparing the play's portrayal of Moll with later developments in Moll
Cutpurse lore, which the Norton Critical Edition traces through the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Perhaps most engaging for classroom
discussion are substantial excerpts from the 1620 cross-dressing
pamphlets--Hic Mulier; or, The Man-Woman and Haec Vir; or, The
Womanish Man--which appear in annotated, modern-spelling versions.
Together they give insight into how gender-bending trends in clothing,
similar to those practiced by Moll, were understood in the early
seventeenth century. A related passage from A Sermon of Apparel adds
another perspective on cross-dressing practices.
Fourteen critical essays chart the development of scholarly interest in
The Roaring Girl, from the first half of the twentieth century, when
the play received only passing reference, through the work on city
comedy in the 1970s and 1980s, to the explosion of analyses in the late
1980s and 1990s, when the play became a major focus for early modern
gender studies. The more recent critical essays move beyond a strict
focus on gender and cross-dressing to explore The Roaring Girl's
depiction of other aspects of early modern London, including consumer
culture and the contemporary fascination with the language of the
criminal underworld. Contributors include, among others, T. S. Eliot,
Alexander Leggatt, Mary Beth Rose, Jonathan Dollimore, Jean E. Howard,
and Jonathan Gil Harris.
A Selected Bibliography is also included.
