in The Insatiate Countess — Machin, Lewis; Barkstead, William; Marston, John
Metadata
Play
The Insatiate Countess
Author
Machin, Lewis; Barkstead, William; Marston, John
Year (catalogued)
1613
First performance
1607
Decade
1610s
Genre
Tragedy
Play type
Boys Professional
Company
Children of the Queen's Revels (?); Children of the King's Revels (?)
Theater
Whitefriars;Indoor Professional
Speech prefix(es)
Anna. | An.
Words
231
Characters
1238
Typicality
0.35 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP id
A07067
BritDrama no.
1605
Cluster
Cluster 3 — Citizens, tradesfolk & neighbors
Important excerpts
No keyword-matching excerpt could be extracted (the cluster label doesn't share vocabulary with this character's speech).
Full speech
Madame, did you call? Madame, It was the worthy Count Massino. Yes, Madame, I have trust up them, that many A proper man has been trust up for. Yes Madame, the house is fit. Madame, the Count Rogero knocks. My office still is under: yet in time Ushers prove Master's, degrees makes us climb. Guido knocks. Who knocks? is't you my noble Lord? My Lady's in her Pulpit, now shee'll preach. Your Lordship will command me no further service? I hope I did discharge my place with care. What mean you Nobles, will you kill each other? My office ever rested at your pleasure, I was the Indian, yet you had the treasure. My faction often sweats, and oft takes cold, Then gild true diligence over with gold. Lords farewell, Exit Anna. Upon mine honesty they are united. I am, what you please Madame. Yet it's so. No, no, no Madame. Madame: I run, her sighed Like death does fear me. Ex. I am joust of your mind Madame, I am gone. Exit And. Madame I go. I am kept for pleasure, though I never taste it. For it's the ushers office still to cover His Ladies private meetings with her Lover. Exit. Madame, he's coming No, my good Lord. In her Chamber. The chamber's locked my Lord: she will be private. Be patient good my Lord: shee'll give you answer.
Plot summary
Plot — The Insatiate Countess
Suitors visit Isabella, who is in open mourning for her dead husband, but secretly glad to be free of his jealousy and restrictions. She accepts Count Roberto’s suit and they are married the following day; but when she dances with Count Rogero in the wedding masque, her affections turn. She woos Rogero by letter and elopes with him to Pavia; Roberto enters holy orders. At Pavia, Rogero is visited by his friend Gniaca; Isabella falls in love with the newcomer, and feigns illness to give herself an opportunity to seduce him. After bedding Gniaca, she then feigns penitence to free herself from Rogero. The spurned lover takes his revenge by circulating bitter satires on Isabella’s promiscuity, so she sets on Gniaca to kill him. In the attempt, Gniaca is reconciled with his former friend, so Isabella seduces Don Sago, colonel in the Spanish power occupying Pavia, to murder both Rogero and Gniaca. Sago kills Rogero, and is arrested, but pardoned by the Duke of Medina. Isabella’s attempt to bribe the Duke fails to secure her freedom, and she is beheaded after a scaffold reconciliation with Roberto. In the sub-plot, the enemies Claridiana and Mizaldus are both married on the same day. They quarrel when they meet, and Mizaldus’s wife Abigail and Lady Lentulus, who are close friends, compare notes and swap places: each receives her own husband in the other’s bedroom. Meanwhile their friends Mendosa and Lady Lentulus, attracted to one another, try to circumvent the latter’s vow not to admit a man through her front door: he climbs up to her window by rope ladder, but falls into the street, where the watch find him injured and send him to a surgeon. Claridiana and Mizaldus are arrested in each other’s house; appalled at the thought of being cuckolded, they both confess to murdering Mendosa. Mendosa in turn tries to save Lady Lentulus’s honour with a false confession that he was attempting to burgle her house. In court, the Duke establishes that Claridiana and Mizaldus are telling incompatible stories about the ‘murder’, and they are sentenced to death in jest; in Mendosa’s case, however, the sentence is genuine. Claridiana and Mizaldus are determined to die until confronted with evidence of their wives’ chastity; with reconciliation comes reprieve.