in The Devil's Law Case (When Women Go to Law the Devil Is Full of Business) — Webster, John
Metadata
Play
The Devil's Law Case (When Women Go to Law the Devil Is Full of Business)
Author
Webster, John
Year (catalogued)
1623
First performance
1619
Decade
1620s
Genre
Tragicomedy
Play type
Adult Professional
Company
Queen Anne's Men
Speech prefix(es)
Contil. | Contil | Conti.
Words
449
Characters
2423
Typicality
0.19 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP id
A14869
BritDrama no.
1875
Cluster
Cluster 1 — Wives, widows & intimate counsel
Important excerpts
No keyword-matching excerpt could be extracted (the cluster label doesn't share vocabulary with this character's speech).
Full speech
She's sick, my Lord. Good my Lord, be assured, I will leave all circumstance, and come tooth purpose: This Romelio is a Bastard. Why she is your accuser. That's not the business. I'll conclude in a word: Some nine and thirty years since, which was the time, This woman was married, Francisco Romelio, This Gentleman's putative father, and her husband Being not married to her passed a fortnight, Would needs go travel; did so, and continued In France and the Low-Countries eleven months: Take special note o'th time, I beseech your Lordship, For it makes much to'th business: in his absence He left behind to sojourn at his house A Spanish Gentleman, a fine spruce youth By the Ladies confession, and you may be sure He was no Eunuch neither; he was one Romelio loved very dearly, as oft haps, No man alive more welcome to the husband Then he that makes him Cuckold. This Gentleman I say, Breaking all Laws of Hospitality, God his friends wife with child, a full two months Before the husband returned. I warrant thee. Prithee hold thy prating. What's to be practised now my Lord? Marry this, Romelio being a young novice, not acquainted With this precedence, very innocently Returning home from travel, finds his wife Grown and excellent good Huswife, for she had set Her women to spin Flax, and to that use, Had in a study which was built of stone, Stored up at least and hundredth weight of flax: Marry such a thread as was to be spun from the flax, I think the Like was never herd of. You may be certain, she would loose no time, In bragging that her Husband had God up Her belly: to be short, at seven months end, Which was the time of her delivery, And when she felt her self to fallen in travel, She makes her Waiting woman, as by mischance, Set fire to the flax, the flight whereof, As they pretend, causes this Gentlewoman To fallen in pain, and be delivered Eight weeks asore her reckoning. Yes my Lord. True my Lord. You have it fully. In Castille. In Anno seventy one, my Lord. The deposition of a Waiting-woman served her the same time. What title shall I set to this base coin; He has no name, and for's aspect he seems, A Giant in a May-game, that within Is nothing but a Porter' I'll undertake, He had as good have traveled all his life With Gypsies: I will fell him to any man For and hundred Chickeens, and he that buys him of me, Shall lose byth hand too. She's here my Lord; make way there for the Lady.
Plot summary
Plot — The Devil's Law Case (When Women Go to Law the Devil Is Full of Business)
Contarino, who has been wooing Jolenta, asks her family’s permission to marry her, but her widowed mother Leonora misunderstands his oblique request and thinks she is herself the object of his interest. Meanwhile Jolenta’s brother, Romelio, would prefer her to marry Ercole; but she refuses him and Ercole takes offence. Contarino fights a duel with Ercole, and they wound one another. The bodies are sent to a 1618 monastery. Ercole recovers and decides to forgo his interest in Jolenta to Contarino, should he too survive. Concerned that he should not, Romelio visits the monastery disguised as a Jewish physician, and stabs Contarino’s body. He is seen by two surgeons, who plan to blackmail him; but ironically the stab clears Contarino’s wound and facilitates his recovery. Romelio’s financial situation is perilous: he has lost his mercantile carracks of spice. Contarino has named Jolenta his heir; Romelio plans to make her Ercole’s too, by fabricating the story that she is pregnant by him. Romelio himself will supply the eventual baby: he has got a nun, Angiolella, with child, and wants both to cover this up and ensure that his issue will inherit both suitors’ property. Jolenta, however, claims that she really is pregnant, by Contarino; so Romelio proposes that she should produce twins. Knowing of Leonora’s interest in Contarino, he fosters jealousy between mother and daughter. The Spanish judge Crispiano comes to Naples in disguise with three objectives: to observe his son’s lifestyle, to investigate reports of illegal gold-mining by Romelio, and to appoint the lawyer Ariosto as a judge. Blaming her son for Contarino’s death, Leonora brings a false law-case that will deprive him of his patrimony by establishing his illegitimacy: he was conceived, she claims, during his father’s absence. Crispiano sits as judge, and attributes the action to malice, but stands down when he becomes a party in the case: Leonora names him as Romelio’s natural father. Ariosto takes his place on the bench, and Crispiano demonstrates that he was not even in Europe at the time in question. To evade punishment, Leonora claims to have become a nun. Ercole, present in disguise, is arrested for killing Contarino, but accuses Romelio of the crime. In the absence of a witness, this is to be settled in a trial by combat. Contarino, incognito, agrees to fight on Ercole’s side. The news of Contarino’s survival reaches Leonora via her confessor, a Capuchin, but Romelio locks them in a tower on…