Lecture de The Roaring Girl (1611) de Thomas Dekker et Thomas Middleton : Moll Cutpurse ou le principe du théâtre

Abstract

The London world staged in The Roaring Girl revolves around the figure of its eponymous heroine, based on the real Moll Frith. The « roaring girl » is a paradoxical figure : although she is preceded by an infamous reputation, she is the only truly virtuous character in a world dominated by acquisitiveness and deceit. Dressed as a man, she is also a character of an ambivalent gender, who refuses sexuality the better to assert her freedom. Finally, by virtue of her partly referential status, she has a unique status in the play, and it comes as no surprise that Moll Frith should be said to have played her own part once : for Moll Cutpurse clearly stands out of the frame, constantly commenting on the action in a metafictional way and manipulating the characters as a stage-director. She is thus the only character who can see through deceit and make-believe around her, and she paradoxically restores a certain notion of justice at the end, by regenerating the very concept of virtue. More fundamentally, Moll allegorically stands for the principle of comedy, that was coming under increasing attack from Puritan quarters, and demonstrates its paradoxical heuristic power : while dressing up and basing her power on illusion, she ends up correcting her fellow human beings and, finally, restoring a sense of justice and of virtue.