Early Modern Drama · Character Archetypes

ACRELESS

in The Gamester — Shirley, James

Metadata

PlayThe Gamester
AuthorShirley, James
Year (catalogued)1637
First performance1633
Decade1630s
GenreComedy
Play typeAdult Professional
CompanyQueen Henrietta Maria's Men
TheaterPhoenix/Cockpit;Indoor Professional
Speech prefix(es)Acr. | Acr, | Acr
Words183
Characters945
Typicality0.42 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP idA12137
BritDrama no.2418
ClusterCluster 16 — Errand servants & brief parts

Important excerpts

No keyword-matching excerpt could be extracted (the cluster label doesn't share vocabulary with this character's speech).

Full speech

Dost not see a gentleman led to Prison? We'll rescue him from the Offcers, come join with us: We shall draw more to the cause. How dost mean? Confound they. What if the gentleman that's hurt should die? Then ther's no hope for tother. Come let's to Tavern. How? Right noble Hazard, Here's to thee. We do not believe it's gold, And me too, come let's drink. One that is to fine for Alderman. He has power to command your welcome. Why hers to you, sir, Master Wilding. Lost, lost— I defy thee, if my Knight recover not I must be sober to morrow. And how thrive the bones with his Lordship Let us in again. Master Hazard, I was afraid you had been gone, there's a fresh Gamester come in with his pockets full of Gold; he dazeles the Gamesters, and no man has stock to play with him. A Merchant he seems; he may be worth your retire. Cozen of yours I take it. Then his Uncle paid for't? This fellow wood would tother Cup. How now, what S the matter?

Plot summary

Plot — The Gamester
Wilding is sexually uninterested in his wife, but propositions her ward, Penelope, with the promise that afterwards he will find her a husband. Penelope agrees to sex with him only if Mistress Wilding consents, so Wilding duly asks his wife. Mistress Wilding encourages Penelope to agree—in order to facilitate a plot. Penelope insists on a midnight assignation: Wilding is to come in the dark and neither of them shall speak during the encounter. The plan is for Mistress Wilding to take Penelope’s place. When the evening comes, however, Wilding is more interested in a gambling event at an ordinary, and sends Hazard to sleep with Penelope in his place; but after losing his money in the game, he envies Hazard his more pleasurable night. Then Mistress Wilding tells him of the substitution, and he is tormented with the thought of being a cuckold, until he realizes that Hazard still thinks he slept with Penelope. He puts it to Hazard that they should marry, but Hazard is unwilling, until he hears of Penelope’s £2,000 estate. He woos and marries her, then tells Wilding that the earlier assignation did not go as expected: both Mistress Wilding and Penelope were there, armed with a light and planning to rebuke Wilding for his lechery. No sex took place, and so Wilding is no cuckold. In the second plot, the friends Delamore and Beaumont fall out in a drunken argument about their respective girlfriends, Leonora and Violante, and Beaumont wounds Delamore. One man is taken to a surgeon, the other to prison. Leonora’s father, Sir Richard Hurry, is delighted—he disapproves of Delamore and has a debt of honour to the Beaumont family—and endeavours to find a way of saving Beaumont from prosecution for murder. The terms he puts to Beaumont, however, are that he shall marry Leonora on his release, breaking off his engagement to Violante. Beaumont refuses, and Violante, who has overheard the conversation after bribing the jailer, cannot persuade him to change his mind and save his life. When he continues to refuse, Hurry agrees to his marrying Violante instead of Leonora. It emerges that Delamore is alive, so Beaumont is no longer in danger of capital proceedings. In the third plot, the rich citizen Barnacle pays Hazard to lose a staged quarrel with his nephew, Young Barnacle, in order to give the youth a dangerous reputation that will allow him to walk the streets safely. Young Barnacle proves ludicrously inept at picking a fight, but Hazard eventually takes his beating. Old…