A funny play

A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Middleton challenge 2 of 10

Here is how this particular play starts.  Maudlin, an older woman is talking to Moll, a younger woman about getting some sex.

MAUDLIN
Last week? When I was of your bord, he missed me not a night, I was kept at it; I took delight to learn, and he to teach me, pretty brown gentleman, he took pleasure in my company; but you are dull, nothing comes nimbly from you, you dance like a plumber's daughter, and deserve two thousand pounds in lead to your marriage, and not in goldsmith's ware.

A pretty bawdy speech from one to another.  This is the last part of a somewhat longer conversation, and then Yellowhammer enters the scene and delivers and absolutely funny line.  (Or so I think.)

YELLOWHAMMER
Now what's the din betwixt mother and daughter, ha?

This play revels in indecency, is populated with bastards, whores, adulterers, cheats, puritans, and liars.  It has everything a low mind as mine needs.  One of the first thoughts is that Shakespeare could not have written something like this, because I do not think he has ever written anything in contemporary London, and his characters are a little more formalized.  There are five love triangles in this play.  All of the children but one is a bastard, and I think all of the wives cheat except for one.  On of the funnier subplots involves a character names Allwit who allows his wife to sleep with Sir Walter Whorehound as long as Walter pays for the house, servants, and children's (Walter's) upbringing.  Allwit is delighted over the arrangement because he doesn't have to work or worry about his wife nagging him because she has nothing to do with him.

I can't leave out Touchwood Senior, who every time he sleeps with a maid gets her pregnant, so he decides to go into business by selling magic water (urine probably), that once drunk will help the man to impregnate his wife.  So he sells his water dearly to Sir Oliver, and then tell him he needs to ride a horse for five hours.  So while the husband is off on a horse, Touchwood is off on Oliver's wife getting her pregnant.  The cuckolded Sir Oliver is so delighted at his wife's condition at the end of the play he hires Touchwood for future services.  The play goes on and on, and right when you think it couldn't go lower, it does, and unfortunately the lower bits are censored.  But a strong imagination can fill in the gaps.

This play has about the most plots and subplots of any play I have ever read, and yet it doesn't feel tiring or overdone.  This is a definite recommendation.