Roaring Girl

<p>This Jacobean city comedy is a curiosity in that it presents a<br>real-life character the notorious cross-dresser Moll Frith who<br>probably was among the first audiences of 'her' play before she was<br>taken up for public misconduct. Middleton and Dekker's 'roaring girl'<br>may outrage her society with her pipe bluster and swagger but she<br>turns out to be the moral centre of the play. Her code of honour leads<br>her to call the bluff on rogues and conspicuous consumers to thrash a<br>hypocritical gallant in a duel and to act as go-between for the young<br>lovers thwarted by parental tyranny. This wry dramatisation of female<br>deviancy exposing male ineffectuality is as much to the point today as<br>it was in King James's England. An appendix helps the modern reader to<br>appreciate the canting terms used by the low-life characters.</p>