The Price of Virginity in the Early Modern Theater:

Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling,

by Jaecheol Kim Yonsei University, Seoul

To open the question: Pricing virginity

Thomas Middleton was obsessed with virginity – or, at least, he enjoyed
ridiculing his society’s obsession with it. Of course, this is not unusual. The theme
of women’s virginity or chastity often shapes the thematic motif in male
narratives. For example, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Physician’s Tale (the story of
Virginius and Virginia), John Milton’s Comus, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the
d’Urbervilles, Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, and many other works revolve
around the issue of virginity. Middleton’s illustration of virginity is, nonetheless,
somewhat peculiar in that he explores the price of virginity. During Elizabeth I’s
rule, virginity was the most sensitive politico-literary theme as it was inseparable
from the queen’s iconic image and the way she defined the national identity. After
the Protestant Reformation, for instance, Sir. Walter Raleigh and Edmund
Spenser systemically transformed Virgin Mary worship to the Elizabethan virgin
cult, and during the queen’s reign, literary works keenly reacted to the issue.1
However, with the advent of a new political order formed by the accession of
James I, authors began shaping a different imagination. The typical example is
Middleton: in his Jacobean imagination, as depicted in The Revenger’s Tragedy,
Gloriana – the sobriquet that frequently referred to Elizabeth’s royal persona –
remains only a dead skull, and memories of Elizabeth already vanished with the
virgin cult. Middleton most directly responds to the semantic transformation of
virginity caused by the regime change, and in his work whether he maintains an
affirmative or a negative attitude, virginity is understood as something that could
be properly priced. Of course, this does not mean that Middleton claims virginity
has a properly calculated price or unambiguously supports the patriarchal desire
to price virginity. Rather, I would argue that Middleton understands virginity as
a theme subject to male hermeneutics and believes the price of virginity could be
reckoned only by one’s life and blood – thus, questioning a model of power, vitae
necisque potestas (power of life and death).

In A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Middleton’s city comedy, Sir Walter expects to

“receive two thousand pound in gold/And a sweet maidenhead worth forty”
(4.4.54–55) through his marriage to Moll, a middle-class artisan
Yellowhammer’s chaste daughter.3 Of course, in this period, marriage was a
matter of property inheritance, and the “two thousand pound” signifies the
property he will receive from Yellowhammer through the marriage deal.
However, her forty-pound-worth “sweet maidenhead” is an additional windfall
as it is considered the price for buying a virgin whore. Given that in Middleton’s
time one pound was 240 pence – roughly the amount of money with which a
groundling could enjoy playgoing for a whole year by paying a penny for a play
– for the price to take a virginity, a man could enjoy playgoing almost for his
entire life. This sort of calculation, nevertheless, is impossible, as a woman’s
physical virginity was never self-evident – and in Middleton’s imagination, it is
something that could be easily feigned. For example, A Mad World, My Masters
features a courtesan, Frank Gullman, who sells her virginity “fifteen times”
(1.1.162). Counterfeiting and reselling virginity in London brothels was common,
and men’s pursuit of virginity was derided in playhouses. When Shakespeare
opens The Two Noble Kinsmen with the words “new plays and maidenheads are
near akin:/Much followed both, for both much money giv’n” (Prologue.1–2), he
understood that virginity is a performative and theatrical phenomenon par
excellence. Of course, the market value of virginity is never properly fixed but
differs from one maiden to another. In The Revenger’s Tragedy, by
demonstrating the agony of Castiza – an allegorical personification of chastity –
Middleton calculates the value of virginity when it is offered to a Duke’s son.
Even her mother, by pushing her daughter to be a whore, discusses virginity as
follows:
O, if thou knew’st
What ’twere to lose it, thou wouldst never keep it;
But there’s a cold curse laid upon all maids:
Whilst others clip the sun, they clasp the shades.
Virginity is paradise locked up.
You cannot come by yourselves without fee,
And ’twas decreed that man should keep the key.
Deny advancement, treasure, the Duke’s son? (2.1.148–55)

One peculiar logic of Middleton’s play is that it is clearly aware of the fact that
maidenhead is something that can create value only when it is torn and destroyed;
insofar as it is “locked up” and preserved, it is worthless. What actually draws
Middleton’s attention is the way it is torn and the price both men and women pay
for its destruction. In Middleton’s work, virginity is an intriguing issue as it raises
the symbolic economy of destruction. This peculiar logic is maintained in his
work collaborated with William Rowley, The Changeling, and the primary
purpose of this essay is to survey the hyper economic exchange revolving around
the issue of virginity and the way this hyper-economy defines a woman’s life in
the play.