"Pox on kindred:" The Anonymous Counterfeit Bridegroom (1677) and its Middletonian Source

Abstract

"Pox on kindred:"The Anonymous Counterfeit Bridegroom (1677) and its Middletonian Source1 Jennie Challinor Appearing on stage and in print in 1677, but of unknown provenance, a disguised and revised yet still recognizable version of a nearly forgotten play, The Counterfeit Bridegroom exhibits a close but complicated kinship to Thomas Middleton's No Wit/Help Like a Woman's (1611, pub. 1657).2 While The Counterfeit Bridegroom's plot and structure is very close to that of Middleton's play, with large chunks of verbatim dialogue, the 1677 version is condensed, written with more polish, and includes a number of revisions and additions that serve to create a darker, colder tone than is found in the earlier work.3 The anonymous comedy, which has a tradition of being linked to Aphra Behn, has received little scholarly attention,4 but a close examination of the ways in which an old Middleton play was dusted off and transformed for a new era contributes to our understanding of the cultural, intellectual, and dramatic preoccupations of the Restoration playhouses. This article challenges Gerard Langbaine's dismissal in 1691 of Counterfeit Bridegroom as "only an Old Play of Middleton's,"5 demonstrating instead that the various modifications, both to text and to stagecraft, render it as much a product of 1677 as of its earlier Jacobean moment. The emotionally generous, at times sentimental, register of No Wit/Help Like a Woman's is revised into a darker play, in which familial bonds are frequently abused and dismissed. In both plays, families reunite, new unions are created, and relationships between characters are unsettled and reorganized into unexpected configurations. And yet, I will argue, in The Counterfeit Bridegroom the principles of kinship and kindness that ultimately underpin Middleton's play are replaced by the individualistic desires of characters who enact various cruelties and deceptions, many of which remain unexamined (if superficially resolved) by the play's end. This new focus privileges intellect over emotion, the individual [End Page 37] over community, and appetite over reason, resulting in a more threatening and dangerous vision of social and sexual interaction. After exploring the key differences between the plays and examining the creation of this more ruthless play world, I will concentrate on two specific areas in which The Counterfeit Bridegroom diverges from its source material: the expansion and intensification of the treatment of incest, and the introduction of an attempted rape in the final scene. These modifications alter the play's tone and through these intersecting themes, Middleton's comedy is twisted to bear the weight of transgressive (male) libertine desires that threaten to overwhelm social and moral convention. The Counterfeit Bridegroom's portrayal of intimate interactions and, particularly, its expanded treatment of incestuous feeling and the introduction of an act of sexual violence exposes a more brutal vision of society and the family than in Middleton. One character's dismissal of family—"Pox on kindred"—echoes throughout The Counterfeit Bridegroom, muddying the various attempts to establish likeness and affinity (4.1; p. 38). The wider effects of this Restoration remodelling become apparent through an exploration of the relationship—and especially the discontinuities—between the anonymous 1677 comedy and its Middletonian source: the starkest changes occur in the final act, where we find an entirely new scene of male revelry (5.2), which leads, thematically and structurally (with the utilisation of the Restoration discovery scene) into a final scene that begins with a threatened rape. These newly introduced elements also have implications for the later play's unknown authorship. By investigating Middleton's play's dramatic parenthood of Counterfeit Bridegroom, it is possible to unpick the specific interventions of the unknown Restoration dramatist, and I conclude by considering issues of adaptation, attribution, and the possible involvement of Aphra Behn. I examine internal evidence, particularly surrounding the treatment of the play's female characters, that complicates (even if it need not entirely frustrate) a possible ascription to Behn. Ultimately, I propose a more complex parentage for The Counterfeit Bridegroom than is usually assumed, one that acknowledges the complexities of a compositional process spanning nearly seventy years and the involvement of multiple playwrights and dramatic voices. The Counterfeit Bridegroom and...