Wallace is a freelance writer and poet. In this essay, Wallace considers Middleton's deft investigation of truth and artifice.
In Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, nothing is quite as it seems. Wives act like whores. Whores pass for wives. Dunces spout Latin to prove their erudition. Middle class parents try desperately to marry their children into an upper class that tries desperately to hide the impending doom of poverty. Even the language Middleton chooses is rife with double meanings. Through all the complicated word-play and the sometimes bewildering tangle of revelations and protestations, Middleton inexorably explores the difference between what truly is and what can be seen, and the human need for both truth and artifice.
Middleton's Cheapside is crowded with characters who would like to be something other than what they are. The Yellowhammer.....
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