SOURCE: “Rehabilitating Moll's Subversion in The Roaring Girl,” in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 37, No. 2, Spring 1997, pp. 317-35.

In this essay, Baston insists that “Moll's defiance is reinvented in The Roaring Girl in order to be contained, enervated, and eventually incorporated into the prevailing social apparatus.”

On 12 February 1612 in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, John Chamberlain included an account of the punishments of three women. Of the first two he writes: “The Lady of Shrewsberie is still in the Towre rather upon wilfulnes, then upon any great matter she is charged withall: only the King is resolute that she shall aunswer to certain interrogatories, and she is as obstinate to make none, nor to be examined. The other weeke a younge mignon of Sir Pexall Brockas did penance at Paules Crosse, whom he had entertained and abused since she was twelve years old.”¹

But what do...