MIXUM

Dr Artless has grown rich by taking in resident lady patients, and is concerned that his house should keep its good name. One of his current guests has a jealous husband, Sir Martin Yellow, who believes the house is really a place of assignation, and sends his nephew Popinjay there in search of evidence. Popinjay meets Artless’s daughter, Dalinea, and falls in love. Meanwhile, the apothecary Mixum has sent Artless a young man, Sconce, as a potential son-in-law; Artless is unconcerned that he is a fool because he is also rich. Sconce’s main preoccupation is with Mixum’s weapon-salve which will cure any wound if applied to the weapon that made it. When Sir Martin wounds him in a jealous rage, he takes away Sir Martin’s sword but finds the salve ineffectual and concludes that there must be something wrong with his blood. Another visitor to Artless’s house is Freewit, a suitor to Mistress Know-worth, but she breaks up with him, having heard from Lovering, her servant, that he has slept with the servant-girl Martha and got her pregnant. When he proves reluctant to marry Martha, Mistress Know-worth gives him an alternative: she will consider his suit if he can persuade Martha to release him from his prior obligation. Artless’s servant Urinal offers to prove to Sir Martin that Lady Yellow is chaste: he is to visit his wife in her bedroom, incognito, while the rest of the household is out at Dalinea’s wedding. The problem is that Dalinea doesn’t want to marry Sconce, to her parents’ annoyance. Sconce is interested in the order of the Knights of the Twibill, which allows its members to marry but will not admit anyone who is already married; he is duly determined to be inducted before his marriage. The ceremony requires him to drink heavily and remove his clothes; but the arrival of a constable causes the Twibills to break it off before it is finished, and Sconce is left without his clothes. Dalinea appears to change her mind about Sconce and goes off to marry him alongside another couple. When they return, however, it emerges that there has been some confusion of identity: Dalinea has married Popinjay, dressed in Sconce’s clothes (acquired by Urinal from the Twibills), while the other couple turn out to be Lovering and the drunken Sconce, cross-dressed as a woman. Lovering, moreover, is really Martha (so the marriage to Sconce is valid after all), inveigled into Mistress Know-worth’s service to test her loyalty to Freewit by giving him the undeserved reputation of…