in 1 The Two Angry Women of Abingdon — Porter, Henry
Metadata
Play
1 The Two Angry Women of Abingdon
Author
Porter, Henry
Year (catalogued)
1599
First performance
1598
Decade
1590s
Genre
Comedy
Play type
Adult Professional
Company
Admiral's (Nottingham's) Men
Speech prefix(es)
La.
Words
157
Characters
761
Typicality
0.22 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP id
A09857
BritDrama no.
1151
Cluster
Cluster 10 — Mourners, mothers & doleful voices
Important excerpts
No keyword-matching excerpt could be extracted (the cluster label doesn't share vocabulary with this character's speech).
Full speech
I must not say so sir. No it not ill. Because you know it is not good to kill. No indeed nor them, Life is as deer in Dear as 'tis in men. But thats bade play, When they are made to sport their lives away. What out of breath? They run but ill that run themselves to death, Why then they see the hounds brings death behind. I but the sto est of you all thats here, Would run from death, and nimbly scud for fear, Now by my troth I pity those poor elves. Yes it my sport to see them escape away. Out thou wood-tyrant thou art worst of all. Yes tyrantlike thou love to see lives die. All night, nay good sir Ralph Smith do not so. Will you not then sir Ralph go home with me? How willingly dost thou continued sent to go, To fetch thy master that same killing bow.
Plot summary
Plot — 1 The Two Angry Women of Abingdon
The Gourseys share a meal with their neighbours, the Barnes family, and the two wives fall out over a game of chance. When Barnes admonishes his wife, she suspects him of adultery with Mistress Goursey. With a view to patching up the wives' quarrel, Barnes plans to marry their daughter Mall to Goursey's son, Frank, but Mistress Goursey finds out about it and goes to pick a fight at the Barnes house. Frank successfully woos Mall, but Mistress Barnes's intervention sends the lovers fleeing, intending to rendezvous in Oxford. They get lost in a nearby rabbit warren, where Sir Ralph Smith is also out hunting, determined to bag some venison if it takes him all night. The other characters search for the lovers in the dark; there is an extended sequence of mistaken identities, during which Will, Sir Ralph's woodman, gets the mistaken idea that his master is looking for a wench. Sir Ralph meets one - Mall. She tells him her story and he offers to intervene to reconcile the two mothers. The husbands find the wives brawling over possession of a torch. Mistress Barnes's tendency to call Mistress Goursey a strumpet leads Goursey to suspect that there is no smoke without fire, and that his wife is having an affair with Barnes. Philip Barnes sees things are getting out of hand, and persuades the two angry women to retract their harsh words and make up their quarrel and agree to the marriage. Sir Ralph arrives to find there is no work for him as peacemaker; instead, he asks the two families to dinner.