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V I R G I N I T Y I N T H E C H A N G E L I N G DOUGLAS DUNCAN McMaster University Asa compact structure of related plots, a network of interlocking images and ironies, The Changeling1 has benefited from critical studies of the objective, analytic type. Necessarily, however, such studies eschew the old and indeterminable questions of interpretation which continue to fascinate new readers. What, for example, is the ratio in DeFlores of complex indi vidual and embodiment of evil? Is Beatrice only a wicked young woman whose pretences to the contrary are ironically flayed, or is she also in any sense tragic? And what is the real, as distinct from the symbolic, relationship between these two characters toward the end of the play? Such questions focus on that area of Middleton’s art where his sleight of hand latterly became deft and hard to detect: the interweaving of his often conflicting interests in natural portraiture and schematic morality.2 This essay reaches some views on those matters through examining the treatment in the main plot of the theme of virginity. If one theme recurs more than others in Middleton’s work it is the ex ploitation of woman’s sexuality, and especially virginity, for the commercial and social advantage of herself or her family. The almost total absence of this theme from The Changeling is made the more remarkable by its promi nence in Middleton’s source.3 Reynolds had stressed how both Beatrice’s suitors, Piracquo and Alsemero, were superior to her family in rank and wealth; her father, Vermandero, gives encouragement to the former “as knowing it greatly for her preferment, & aduancement” and “because he perfectly knew that Piracquo’s meanes farre exceed that of Alsemero.” Middleton’s Vermandero shows none of these normal concerns. He controls his daughter’s choice, but chooses Piracquo as a “complete” gentleman to be preferred to “ the proudest he” in Spain (i.i.212-17); he welcomes Alsemero first out of love for his father — a detail not in Reynolds — and second because of his “noble” reputation in Valencia (m.iv. 1). Beatrice in the play is far from being Reynolds’s “meane . . . gentlewoman” attracted to Alsemero by “ the sumptuousnesse of his apparell.” Instead, at some cost to credibility, she is shown as very rich, with unquestioned access to her riches. English Studies in Canada, ix, i , March 1983 If the three thousand gold florins which she offers to DeFlores as bloodmoney is meant to sound like a large sum, the effect is to stress that, even when doubled (m.iv.73), ^ still falls far short of her entire wealth in gold and jewels which she is willing to stake against rape (157). So far from trading her virginity for worldly rewards, Beatrice offers vast wealth in order to protect it. Her lovers care about it too. Alsemero’s concern, emphasized by his laboratory of testing equipment, is the reason for the drastic measures which Beatrice takes to conceal what she loses. Even DeFlores, obsessed with his “pleasure,” insists at a moment of very high tension that half of his pleasure will depend on her virginity being “perfect” (m.iv.i 16-19). It appears that Middleton, in making virginity central to his play, resisted opportunities afforded by his source of treating it in his favourite way as a marketed commodity. He treats it instead as a religious ideal. In related ways Alsemero and Beatrice venerate that ideal as inseparable from their concept of virtue and holy marriage, while for DeFlores too, on a different level, virginity is a religious emblem in the sense that his pursuit of Beatrice’s body is seen as worship of a kind, a carnal travesty of chivalric devotion. Most plays of the period use the cheapening of virginity to stigmatize moral decadence. In The Changeling the blind over-valuing of it is both an object of ironic scrutiny and a factor contributing to tragedy. Early remarks about Alsemero’s indifference to women (i.i.36-39, 58-63) indicate, if not necessarily his virginity, at least a degree of sexual purity sufficient to authorize his concern for his...
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