Your Five Gallants
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Your Five Gallants is a Jacobean comedy by Thomas Middleton. It falls into the sub-genre of city comedy. Allusions in the play point to a date of authorship of 1607. The play was acted by the Children of the Chapel.
The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on March 22, 1608. The quarto published by bookseller Richard Bonian is undated, but probably followed the registration by a small gap and appeared later in 1608. The title page assigns the play to "T. Middleton."
The five "gallants" of the play's title are frauds, poseurs, and con men—a pickpocket, pimp, pawnbroker, cheat, and whoremonger—who compete with the protagonist, Fitsgrave, for the affections of Katherine, a wealth orphan. (The five conspire to woo Katherine together; the one who wins her will help out the others.) Fitsgrave manipulates them into exposing their own crimes and vices through a masque. Fitsgrave marries Katherine, while the "gallants" marry the five prostitutes who are their shadows in the play. Between the two groups of ne'er-do-wells, Middleton provides a vigorous satire on the manners and mores of London society of the day.
[edit] References
- Chakravorty, Swapan. Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996.
- Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
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