Morose, a solitary misanthrope featured in Epicoene, abhors society and noise of any kind but decides to marry a silent and submissive wife in order to cut his nephew, Dauphine, out of his inheritance. Morose’s house is conveniently (although perversely, given his professed desire for peace and quiet) situated off the Strand, close to the newly developing busy West End in London; the setting immediately alerts us to the contradictory nature of the play. Dauphine and his friends Truewit and Clerimont plot to trick Morose into marrying Epicoene, who appears to be the perfect wife — Morose has to ask her to speak up when she replies in whispered monosyllables to his questions. As soon as they are married, of course, she is far from silent and obedient — she rules the household and scolds her new husband for his rude behaviour. There is a further trick in store for the audiences both on and off stage, when Dauphine (having got Morose to sign away his fortune to free him from his marriage) reveals that the silent woman is in fact a boy.
The play can be read as an anti-feminist attack, as its implied premise is that it is impossible to find a quiet wife, as ‘all women, especially wives, employ their tongues as potent weapons with which to control men’ (Bevington 2000, p. 78). But the forthright energy of the women Collegiates (self-styled know-alls), led by Madame Haughty, although satirised by the young wits, is a source of enormous fun for the audience. They besiege Morose, having heard that he has married a silent woman, and are delighted to witness his comeuppance. As Truewit explains to Haughty, Epicoene ‘is a woman of excellent assurance, and an extraordinary happy wit and tongue. You shall see her make rare sport’ (3.6.42–44). Thus, Jonson comically reverses Shakespeare’s silencing of women.
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