The Plot
The play opens on a heated conversation between the Captain and his paramour, Mistress Wanton. (In the seventeenth century, the title "Mistress," or "Mrs.," was applied to both married and single women; Wanton is single, beautiful, clever, and highly desirable.) The Captain is "in choler," angry at the conduct of his erstwhile friend the Parson. In past periods of poverty, the Parson was a humble acquaintance of the Captain and Wanton; but now that he has obtained a comfortable clerical benefice (a "fat living") through the patronage of Lady Loveall, the Parson looks down on his old friends. When Wanton reveals that the Parson once proposed marriage to her, the Captain is struck with an inspiration: they will arrange a marriage between the Parson and Wanton, as a way of working their revenge.
When the Parson enters, the Captain attacks him with lush and imaginative verbal abuse. The Parson responds in kind. Wanton takes the Parson's side in the argument, and the Captain pretends to storm off. The Parson impulsively renews his suit for Wanton's hand in marriage.
The following scenes introduce a profusion of other characters. The main players are:
- Lady Wild and Mrs. Pleasant, two attractive, witty, and desirable gentlewomen. Both single, they are the main potential romantic conquests of the play.
- Master Wild, the Lady's nephew, and his friend Master Careless; the main protagonists.
- Master Jolly; he and the Captain support and aid Careless and Wild in attaining Lady Wild and Mrs. Pleasant respectively. Both Jolly and the Captain are among the lovers of Lady Loveall, and contend over the possession of a favor (a pearl necklace) that Jolly obtains from her; but they can put that rivalry aside in pursuit of other sport and wit.
- Mrs Constant and Mr. Sad, the two men who are the main rivals of the protagonists for the hands of Lady Wild and Mrs. Pleasant.
Most of the play is devoted to repartee among these characters. While the play contains some physical humor (in a scene in mid-play, Crop the Brownist is abused and ejected from London's Devil Tavern), it is dominated by verbal wit. The characters converse, quarrel, and flirt with each other, scheme with and manipulate each other, between eating and drinking. A small sample can be extracted from II,vii:
- Pleasant: I beseech you, sir, let us never be better acquainted.
- Jolly: I shall endeavour, lady, and fail in nothing that is in my power to disoblige you; for there is none more ambitious of your ill opinion than I.
- Pleasant: I rejoice at it; for the less love, the better welcome still.
The Captain's plot against the Parson comes to fruition when the Parson goes to bed drunk; the plotters slip the elderly Bawd into his bed in place of Wanton, then burst in disguised as watchmen and constables. They drag him before a supposed Justice of the Peace (actually Mr. Wild in disguise). The Parson confronts social and professional ruin for his apparent sexual misconduct; even when the trick is revealed, he risks profound embarrassment over its possible exposure. The frightened Parson is cowed into the status of a wittol, a complaisant cuckold, as Wanton pursues her erotic adventures; he even joins in some of the further schemes of his tricksters.
Constant and Sad work their own scheme to trap Lady Wild and Mrs. Pleasant into matrimony; they exclude the two women from the Lady's own house by pretending that her coachman has died of the plague. (Killigrew's humor is bold enough to use bubonic plague as a casual element in his comedy.) The two women find refuge in the house of the Lady's nephew, Mr. Wild. Masters Careless and Wild work their own trick on the women, spreading the rumor that their marriages have already taken place and arranging appearances to that effect. To avoid public shame, the two women accept the two men as their husbands — marriages which are appropriate in the social world of the play. The Parson performs the ceremony that unites Mr. Careless with Lady Wild, and Mr. Wild with Mrs. Pleasant. (And Mrs. Wanton goes off with Mr. Jolly.)
This long prose play (it must have been cut significantly for stage performance) includes a range of noteworthy features. The character Faithful, who runs a charity hospital for the sufferers of sexually transmitted diseases, is one striking example.
Read more about this topic: The Parson's Wedding
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