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)
Arsen. | Count. Ars. | Arsena. | Count Rog.
Words
382
Characters
2146
Typicality
0.51 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP id
A07067
BritDrama no.
1605
Cluster
Cluster 8 — Martial kings & Roman gravity
Important excerpts
No keyword-matching excerpt could be extracted (the cluster label doesn't share vocabulary with this character's speech).
Full speech
Oh fry not in choler so Sir. Gentlemen, leave these dissensions, Signior Rogero, you are a man of worth. You are of Like reputation Signior Claridiana : The hatred betwixt your Grandsires first began, Impute it to the folly of that age. These your dissensions may erect a faction, Like to the Capulets and Montagues. Nay, then we will be Constables, and force a quiet: Exeunt all the Men. Manet Lent. Thais. Abig. and Mend. Gentlemen, keepe'em asunder, and help to perswade'em. Sir, be you of the more flexible nature, and confess and error. By heaven this voluntary reconsilation made Freely, and of it self, argues unfeigned And virtuous knot of love. So sirs embrace. Nay see now, fie upon your turbulent spirit, Did he doo't in this form? What sayest thou Mizaldus, come applaud this Jubilee, A day these hundred years before not truly known, To these divided factions. Well said Mizaldus : thou art Like the Base Viol in a Consort, let the other Instrument wish and delight in your high est sense, thou art still grumbling. Oh sir, who but the very heir of all her sex, That bears the Palm of beauty from'em all: Others compared to her, show Like faint Stars To the full Moon of wonder in her face: The Lady Isabella, the late Widow To the deceased and noble Viscount Hermut. Gentlemen, your answer to the Masque. Saneta Maria, what thinkest thou of this change? A Players passion I'll believe hereafter, And in a Tragic Scene weep for old Priam, When fell revenging Pyrrhus with supposed And artificial wounds mangles his breast, And think it a more worthy act to me, Then trust a female mourning over her love: Nought that is done of woman shall me please, Nature's step-children rather her desire. I for his arch-foes wedding Signior Rogero, and the spruce M ris . Thais : but see, the solemn rites are en dead, and from their several Temples they are come. And Gentlemen, since it hath happened so fortunately, I do entreat we may all meet to morrow, In some Heroic Masque, to grace the Nuptials Of the most noble Countess of Swevia. Art not Guiaca turned Apostata, ha pleasure once again Turned thee again a devil, art not Guiaca ? hah!
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.