Wednesday 25 January 2012

The Changeling - Not the Clint Eastwood Movie, but better...

Middleton Challenge (3 of 10)  I should pace myself.  And #12 for the year.

So I just read what many consider to be Middleton's masterpiece, and good it was.  At first I thought it was a comedy, well everything was setting up to be a typical bawdy comedy.  There was a madhouse where everyone seemed to be a sane man pretending to be mad so they could sleep with the doctor's wife.  Their plan didn't quite work out, as in the end they were told to kill each other for the ladies love.

The other thread of the story involved a duchess that is being forced to marry a man she doesn't love, and she also has a servant that is a complete fool and in love with her.  And the whole time she is just insulting this servant right to his face.  I thought this was pretty funny for two acts, and then people start killing each other.  After the second killing I figured this wasn't a comedy.

So this woman asks the foolish servant to kill her groom to be, he does for love and her maidenhead, which she gives him.  So now she can marry her true love and discovers that he has a book on detecting virginity so she has her servant girl spend the wedding night with her husband so he doesn't notice her lack of virginity.  Well this servant girl enjoys it longer into the night than the duchess is happy with so the duchess has the foolish servant kill the servant girl.  Does this make sense?  Then all comes out, and the evildoers are killed at the end.  Also the madhouse scenes are more for the creation of foils than anything, as their importance to the plot is minimal.  The madhouse scenes are for the most part comedic.

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