SOURCE: "Men and Women Beware: Social, Political, and Sexual Anarchy in Women Beware Women," in Iowa State Journal of Research, Vol. 61, No. 3, February, 1987, pp. 311-21.

Bromley maintains that the corruption and immorality in Women Beware Women are caused by the collapse of the social structures of family, class, and church

In the last scene of Women Beware Women, the characters moralize about the cause of their downfall: "Lust and forgetfulness has been amongst us, / And we are brought to nothing" (V.ii.146-47), declares Hippolito; Livia admits, "My own ambition pulls me down to ruin" (V.i.133); and Bianca laments, "Like our own sex, we have no enemy, no enemy" (V.i.215) (Thomas Middleton, Women Beware Women, ed. Mulryne. All quotations are taken from this edition). If we accept these aphorisms as summarizing the text of the play, we conclude that Middleton wants to show that men and...