Themes
Marriage
In A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, it seems like everybody is either married
or wants to get married. In fact, one marriage in particular, the intended
marriage of Sir Walter to Moll Yellowhammer, creates the conflict in the play.
Sir Walter has agreed to marry Moll and in return he has agreed to have Tim
Yellowhammer marry his niece. This first arrangement also introduces the first
deception. While Moll is in fact a chaste maid, as the title indicates, Sir
Walter's niece—who is not his niece at all but a prostitute—is anything but the
Welsh gentlewoman she pretends to be. As Sir Walter is riding into Cheapside
with the Welsh gentlewoman, he instructs her in her deception. Sir Walter says,
"Here you must pass for a pure virgin.'' Sir Walter also deceives the Allwits
by not telling them that he is planning on getting married. He knows that if
the Allwits suspect Sir Walter is getting married, they will try to stop it
because, as a single man, he will continue to be their benefactor. When Davy
tells Allwit that Sir Walter is intending to marry Moll, Allwit leaves
hurriedly saying, "I have no time to stay, nor scarce to speak, / I'll stop
those wheels, or all the work will break.’’ By this, Allwit refers to all of
the hard work that he and his wife have put into making money off of Sir
Walter.
While Sir Walter intends to marry Moll, she is really in love with Touchwood Junior, whom she wants to marry. Their attempts to marry are thwarted on several occasions. The first time, Touchwood Junior dupes Moll's father, a goldsmith, by having him make the ring that he intends to place on Moll's finger. Touchwood Junior is very bold in this ruse, telling Yellowhammer that he intends to use the ring to steal away a man's daughter. However, Yellow-hammer does not suspect that he is that man and so criticizes any father who is so blind. Yellowhammer says, ‘‘And parents blinded so, but they're served right / That have two eyes, and wear so dull a sight.'' However, Yellowhammer breaks up the marriage of Moll and Touchwood Junior just in time before the parson can marry them. From this point on the Yellowhammers try to keep Moll under lock and key until she is to be wed to Sir Walter. Yellowhammer says, ‘‘In the meantime, I will lock up this baggage, / As carefully as my gold.’’ With some help, Moll escapes again but is literally dragged back by her mother. Feigning a fatal illness, Moll "dies."
Her parents are so caught up with trying to marry Tim to the Welsh gentlewoman that they do not attend the funeral where Moll and Touchwood Junior rise from their coffins and are happily married. The parson says, "Hands join now, but hearts for ever, / Which no parent's mood shall sever.’’ However, the Yellowhammers's "mood" is surprisingly calm and they support the marriage since Sir Walter has proven to be a debtor and is in prison and because they just found out that they have had Tim married to Sir Walter's prostitute. Yellowhammer says, ‘‘My poor boy Tim is cast away this morning, / Even before breakfast: married a whore.’’ Tim is also distraught, until his mother reminds him of his own words, saying, "You told me once, by logic you would prove / A whore an honest woman, prove her so Tim.’’ Tim accepts the challenge, but his new wife beats him to it, saying, ‘‘Sir if your logic cannot prove me honest, /...
(This entire section contains 1241 words.)
See This Study Guide Now
Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this study guide. You'll also get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts.
Already a member? Log in here.
There's a thing called marriage, and that makes me honest.’’ Thus, both marriages turn out happily.
Sex
Besides references to marriage, the play is saturated with sex, most notably
extramarital affairs. Many of the male characters in the play have engaged in
extramarital affairs and so have some of the women. In the seventeenth century
when a man slept with another man's wife, he was said to have cuckolded the
woman's husband. Cuckoldry, which was depicted by multiple horns on the
cuckolded husband's head, was often used to provide humor in plays like this.
In the play, two men, Mr. Allwit and Sir Kix, are cuckolded. Mr. Allwit is
aware of his cuckolding and allows it to happen, since Sir Walter pays for all
of the Allwits's expenses in return for the privilege of sleeping with Mrs.
Allwit. Allwit says about Sir Walter,"He gets me all my children, and pays the
nurse, / Monthly, or weekly, puts me to nothing.'' In fact, the affair between
Sir Walter and Mrs. Allwit is so strong that Sir Walter is jealous of Allwit.
Allwit says, ‘‘I may sit still and play; he's jealous for me—/ Watches her
steps, sets spies—I live at ease.’’
Sir Kix, on the other hand, is unaware of his cuckolding although he
unknowingly alludes to it at times. For example, in one passage Touchwood
Senior, a very fertile man who plans on impregnating the barren Lady Kix—and
attributing her pregnancy to the fake fertility drink that he sells to her
husband—asks Sir Oliver if he remembers their deal. Sir Oliver says, ‘‘Or else
I had a bad head.’’ This comment, which can refer to Kix's memory, could also
be taken by others to refer to the horns that Sir Oliver is about to gain
through his cuckolding. Money
Besides marriage and sex, the characters in the play obsess about money. By
marrying Moll, Sir Walter will get two thousand pounds in a dowry. Although it
appears that he has enough money, the audience finds out at the end that he has
been having a hard time paying his bills. As Yellowhammer notes, Sir Walter
‘‘lies i'th' knight's ward now.’’ The knights ward was a special section in
debtor's prison that was devoted to knights. Yellowhammer further notes, ‘‘His
creditors are so greedy.’’ So, while in the beginning it appears that Sir
Walter is marrying Moll because he is interested only in marrying a virgin, at
the end the audience can see that he also needed the dowry money to settle his
debts. Many of these debts were probably gained from trying to support the
Allwits. Through his long relationship with Mrs. Allwit, Sir Walter pays for
the children they have, as well as all of the Allwits' living expenses. This
certainly helps to drain his funds. As for the Allwits, in the end they use the
property and possessions that they have gotten from Sir Walter to better their
position in life. Allwit says, ‘‘We are richly furnished wife, with household
stuff.’’ Mrs. Allwit suggests that they ‘‘let out lodgings then, / And take a
house in the Strand.'' In other words, they are going to rent out their house
in Cheapside and use the money to buy a house in the Strand, the fashionable
part of London.
Touchwood Senior and his wife also worry about money, since his extreme fertility keeps creating children they cannot afford to raise. However, after he dupes Sir Kix into believing that it was his fertility water—and not Touchwood Senior's affair with his wife—that got Lady Kix pregnant, Sir Kix offers to take care of whatever children Touchwood Senior has. Kix says, ‘‘Be not afraid to go to your business roundly, / Get children, and I'll keep them.’’ After this point, Touchwood Senior and his family no longer have to worry about money.