The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley - Research Paper Example

Kazim Rizvi 23 December The Changeling by Thomas Middleton And William Rowley Research Paper: Character Analysis Thomas Middleton and William Rowley wrote the Jacobean tragedy, The Changeling and this play has, with time, come to be regarded as one of the best tragedies written in the period of English renaissance. Over the years, it has also culled a vast amount of criticism and positive comments from readers and critics around the world. In this research paper, I have made an attempt to analyse the different characters mentioned in the play. These characters bear a great amount of resemblance to famous and renowned people even in today’s age, and some of their traits remain universal. It was interesting to note how their personalities changed during the course of the journey of the story, and how they went through various changes over the course of their respective lives, also intertwined with each others’ because of the various events that took place in their daily lives. Therefore, the focus of this paper has been aligned to the different characters’ existences and how they cope with things that come their way and come to be known in the end. This is mainly a play centred on the idea of sexual tensions between people and how physical beauty always at first outlives a person’s inner beauty and personality. The characters develop and understand their own selves over the course of the entire play and come to terms with themselves as to how they should have been. (Middleton Thomas, Rowley William 1) This is a tragedy full of regret and realisation, presented in its truest and best self. The analysis of the different characters and their colourful sketches are presented below: Beatrice-Joanna In The Changeling, Beatrice-Joanna comes across to the readers as someone who portrays a sense of rhetoric love. She is a woman who catches the attention of two men at once, and throughout the course of the play, she displays a reflection of the desires of both of them, which coincide and conflict with each other, at the same time. Beatrice-Joanna is Vermandero’s daughter. She is a shrewd young woman whose interests lie in a number of things. She makes men fall for her in order to get her dirty work done, for example, the way she behaves with DeFlores throughout the play. She entices men by making them believe that she will give them what they want most with her – some alone time in the bedroom. “Forsooth, if we are to hear of no wickedness, history must be done away with. So those comedies should be prized which condemn the vices which they bring to our ears, especially when the life of impure women ends in an unhappy death.” Scaliger, a literature critic, said this in reference to Beatrice and the actual impurity that lay within her. With a more thorough analysis given below, with regard to her characteristics, one will be able to comprehend much better, why so. With the help of both Alsemero and DeFlores’s views about her, Beatrice-Joanna comes to a conclusion about herself – that she is someone caught in between her longing to be idealized by others as well as degraded at the same time. According to the style of writing of the two playwrights, Beatrice-Joanna fails to display a moral sense of feminism that most women should be displaying in plays set in the era. Women should be perceived as they are on the outside; however, her yearnings and sexual desires towards both the men give the readers an actual perception, through her eyes, of the kind of freedom that women probably longed for. She was known to fool the men into believing in romance and the soft side of women when at the same time, she wanted to show herself to be an equal to the men that were present in her life. (Greenberg, Caren 2) The main theme because of Beatrice-Joanna’s characteristics shifts towards the wonderment of what women actually want from men in life, and what exactly are the things that they can offer. Due to her character, the play has come to be known as a psychological set of notes that depicts exactly a picture of a lunatic, a lover and a poet. It portrays sexual revenge in its truest form, with the help of Beatrice-Joanna’s unhappiness. It gives the public a picture of the burning passion she held within herself with regard to the two men in her life, and what she could have actually done, had she the chance. She has a great amount of expectations from the men in her life as well. Her body has been also viewed as a canvas for ‘committing the sins of art.’ According to the male characters in the play, it is merely a reflection of something that should be possessed, claimed and condemned. With time, Beatrice tries to convince her father that she is in love with Alsemero, as Piraqo who would otherwise be her suitor, had been killed in the duel against Alsemero. She twines and plucks at his heartstrings all along in order to get things done her way so that nothing in her life goes wrong. Thus, she comes across as someone very selfish and self-centred. She puts herself into a vicious cycle and dilemma as she later realises that having promised DeFlores her body, she cannot back out of the deal because it might lead her into another path of trouble as he blackmails her by saying that he will open his mouth in front of the public and tell everyone how she asked him to murder Alonzo. Beatrice believes herself to be someone very superior, and she also tries to suppress upon DeFlores the fact that she was from higher strata of society and thus could not engage in any form of love with him. This way, she comes across as someone who is bothered about what people might think of her, even though she herself is giving people an opportunity to point fingers at her. However, despite all the pleading and reluctance, she finally gives in to DeFlores demands and also gets married to Alsemero. Beatrice claims to be a virgin, but is not, and thus in order to not disappoint Alsemero on their wedding night, she makes Diaphanta take a virginity test and then go to bed with her husband so that he doesn’t come to know.She feels that she has all the answers and solutions to life’s problems and can fix them without thinking of the other person’s feelings. She is not really sure of who she can trust because she keeps switching loyalties. When DeFlores suggests that he will kill Diaphanta because she doesn’t return from the bedchambers, she agrees immediately and even goes on to tell him that now she is in love with DeFlores. Beatrice thus, over the course of the entire play, doesn’t know what she wants. She wishes that everything goes her away and she is never accused of anything wrong, and that is why she ends up delegating wrongful duties to others so that she can get out of trouble. She plays with human emotions and portrays a very wile character. However in the end, Alsemero finds out the truth and how he was betrayed by her, and she is made to repeat her sins of committing adultery again and again till the epiphany strikes her that she has used others for her own well being without thinking about their feelings. Alsemero Alsemero is a man of his own accords; as the play begins, many think that he is asexual and does not know how to love, however, with his love for Beatrice-Joanna, he changes that perception in the minds of the readers. He is a nobleman, a suitor to the beautiful Beatrice-Joanna and wishes to someday express his courtly love for her. He tries to test her virginity in order to understand and play with her sacred body. He wishes to be with her; however, she shuns him away and breaks his heart as he comes to know from others, that she is engaged to someone else. All this while, since Beatrice is under the impression that he loves men, she doesn’t bother much, and so she feels that he has done well by choosing Jasperino as his companion. Alsemero goes away to take a tour of the castle of Vermandero, Beatrice’s father, and is greeted by Diaphanta (who works under Beatrice’s orders) there, who is completely smitten by him and wants him for herself. However, Alsemero shows his determination to be only with Beatrice as he proclaims a duel against Piraquo; this could mean that he could end up dead, yet he is willing to give up his life for his beloved. (The Tragedies 3) Alsemero finally did get to marry Beatrice; however he was betrayed by her a great deal. It all started when Beatrice decided that she was not a virgin and so could not give herself to him without him finding that out, and thus she sent Diaphanta to the bedchambers at night to engage in love making with Alsemero and give him the false impression that it was actually her. Later though, he finds out all about Beatrice and her shrewd plans and makes her admit to her treacherous behaviour. All this tells the reader that to an extent, he has morals because he was saving himself for only one woman, and would never betray the woman that he was besotted and in love with. Alsemero in the end makes her commit the sins of adultery and as she realises her faults, she begs him for forgiveness. He comes off as someone very mature as he proclaims that he is not in love with her anymore, and has grown up and seen with his own eyes how she betrayed him. He speaks of changes or changelings, and how all the beauty that resided within Beatrice was ephemeral and just for show, and the fact that it has all been transferred to a state of desperateness on her part. He also realises that even though he wanted to be a dedicated husband, it was all for a woman whom he merely wished to have because of her exterior beauty. He finds that he was infatuated by Beatrice in the first place, and that he did not really love her, but wanted her for her body. In the epilogue, he ends by saying that the only way he could forget about Beatrice’s memories was by replacing her with someone else, because one cannot forget the dead so easily and the solution to be comforted in such a situation was by having someone who loved him back and cared for him, as well as satisfied his sexual tensions and wants at the same time, just how Beatrice had, for some time, managed to do. (Simons, J.L. 4) DeFlores DeFlores was supposedly perceived as someone very ugly because of the skin disease that he had. He was in love with Beatrice, but it was not the other way around for some time. He was ready to do anything for her, and over the course of the play, also went to some great heights in order to have her. He was lusting after her for a long time, but she never gave him any attention because she found him repulsive. He was someone who could be deceived easily because he was so eager to be accepted within society that he would do anything for anyone who was paying even a small ounce of attention to him.He wished to be with Beatrice, and so the only way that he found he could do that, was to give in to her sins and commit them for her. He killed a few people for her because he was fooled into believing that he would be able to get her body in return as a prize for the deeds that he had committed. Towards the end, he came to realise that Beatrice was a clever woman who was only using him in order to get what she wanted and stay out of trouble, and it was then that he began blackmailing her in order to keep her part of the deal. That is how he finally was able to engage in a physical relationship with her, on the very day of her wedding with Alsemero. He did not believe in the perfect union of marriage, because he was ready to ruin Beatrice’s relationship with Alsemero, and as long as he had her body, he did not want anything else. (Jacobs, Henry. 5) Enveloped with lust for her beauty, he continued taking her orders in a trance like state. In the end, he admitted to Alsemero about all that he had done, just in order to be with her. This is how we witness the change that overcomes his personality as he begins to realise that it was not worth giving up his life for a woman and committing sins, just so that he could have her physical existence. He was consumed by Beatrice, completely but later he realised and admitted to Alsemero his faults as Alsemero forced DeFlores and Beatrice to engage in adultery again and again till they wanted to literally kill themselves. He stabbed himself in the end, and admitted how deeply sorry he was for killing Diaphanta as well. Diaphanta Diaphanta was Beatrice’s waiting woman and accepted all orders from her. She had no mind of her own, because she did what she was told, out of compulsion, without even thinking about anything else. She was in love with Alsemero and was ecstatic when Beatrice asked her to go into his chamber at night and engage in coitus. She was a virgin, and had happily kept herself for Alsemero. She was superstitious and believed that everything happened for a reason. She was also after all a woman, and thus consumed Alsemero completely when she was told to make love to him. She refused to come out of the chamber, and kept at it for hours till DeFlores set the place on fire. She was killed in the end by DeFlores so that Alsemero would not find out about Beatrice’s plan. Alibius Alibius was a jealous doctor in charge of a madhouse or an asylum. He tells his friend Lollio a secret about himself; the fact that he is not able to sexually satisfy his wife and that is why he fears that she might leave him or be infidel to him. This is the main dilemma that his character faces throughout the play. He locks his wife Isabella up so that she doesn’t go out and engage in sexual activities with other men. This is how men perceived themselves to be rulers of their wives and other women in the family at the time and is also a reflection of the period that the play was set in. Since Alibius is the head of a madhouse where he treats and trains his patients or madmen, two men Franciscus and Antonio pretend to be challenged mentally only in order to be able to spend time with Isabella and have sex with her. Lollio Lollio pretends to be Alibius’s friend on the outside, and from within himself he is pining away to have the physical love of Isabella, Alibius’s wife. He is happy that Alibius has kept him in charge of the cell where he keeps Isabella captivated inside so that she doesn’t move out and fall for other men. Lollio believes that the asylum is made of two different kinds of patients; fools or people who were actually born with mental illnesses and deficiencies and madmen who suffered trauma within the course of their lives and tuned mad due to reaching the heights and extremes of emotions. He lets Alibius know that he need not fear about his wife as she was intelligent enough to not have sex with the fools and the madmen of society. However, even then, he is not able to keep Isabella from the other men in the madhouse from her because she wishes to meet them and be with them. Isabella She was a young woman, married to Alibius. She was not in love with him and as he could not satisfy her sexual needs, and so she longed to be with other men even though she had been locked up by her husband so as to prevent her from venturing out in the open and meeting other men. Franciscus and Antonio They were Alibius’s patients under a false notion of pretence. They merely admitted themselves into the madhouse because they were smitten by Isabella and wanted her physical love. Works Cited 1. Middleton, Thomas, and William Rowley. "The Changeling." Cyclopedia of Literary Characters, Revised Third Edition. Salem Press, 1998. eNotes.com. 2006. 23 Dec, 2010 (http://www.enotes.com/changeling-salem/changeling) 2. Greenberg, Caren. "Reading Reading: Echos Abduction of Language," Women and Language in Literature and Society, ed. Sally McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Borker, Nelly Furman (New York: Praeger, 1980). 3. . The Tragedies," in Thomas Middleton, Longman Group, Ltd., 1979, pp. 23-45 4. Simmons, J. L. “Diabolical Realism in Middleton and Rowleys “The Changeling.” Renaissance Drama 11 (1980): 135-70. 5. Jacobs, Henry E. “The Constancy of Change: Character and Perspective in The Changeling.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language XVI, no. 4 (winter 1975): 651-74. Read More