Download The Changeling Education Pack - English Touring Theatre

25 Short Street
London
SE1 8LJ
T: 020 7450 1982
E: education@ett.org.uk
A RESOURCE PACK FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS BASED ON THE ETT/NPTC CO-PRODUCTION
DIRECTOR:
EDUCATION PACK COMPILED BY:
Stephen Unwin
Anthony Biggs, Aisling ONeill Zambon, Sarah Stephenson
Jenny Maddox, Kate Saxon

CONTENTS
English Touring Theatre 3
Introduction to this pack 3
Cast and Creative team 4
Stephen Unwin on The Changeling 5
Synopsis of the play 6
Thomas Middleton 7
Background to The Changeling 8
Jacobean Drama 9
Interview with Stephen Unwin – Director 10
Madness & Sanity in the 17 th Century 11
Rehearsing The Changeling 12
Interview with Mark Bouman - Costume Designer 15
Interview with Paul Wills – Set Designer 17
Interview with Ben Ormerod - Lighting Designer 18
Interview with Timandra Dyer – Production Manager 19
The Role of Women in 17 th Century England 20
Women & Sexuality in The Changeling 22
Assistant Director’s Essay 23
Cast interviews 24
Post-show questions for discussion 28
Exercises 28
Further reading & contact details 32
2

CREATIVE POLICY
ETT is England’s leading touring theatre company.
ETT was founded in 1993. Since then we have toured over forty productions of both European classics and
new plays, and have gained a reputation for work that is carefully conceived, crystal clear and respects the
intelligence of its audience.
At the heart of everything we do is the passionately held belief that quality theatre does not have to be elitist,
and that people everywhere expect and deserve the best.
We have won eighteen major awards, taken fourteen productions into London, and worked with some of the
most talented and respected artists in the country.
We want our work to reflect the diversity of the cities and towns we play in. We have a deep commitment to
creative learning and provide workshops, master-classes, seminars and talks to people of all ages throughout
the country. We provide a wide range of accessible performances.
ABOUT THE COMPANY
ETT was founded by Stephen Unwin in 1993 with the aim of creating outstanding theatre and touring it to the
widest possible audience.
We have always had a strong commitment to Shakespeare, and our award-winning productions include
Hamlet, As You Like It, Henry IV Parts One and Two, King Lear and Hamlet again.
A second line of work has been on Ibsen, with hailed productions of The Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler, The
Master Builder, Ghosts and John Gabriel Borkman.
We have also been remarkably successful with our world premieres, which include two plays by Jonathan
Harvey (Rupert Street Lonely Heart’s Club and Hushabye Mountain), Peter Gill’s The York Realist and Richard
Bean’s Honeymoon Suite.
ETT’s other successes include the 100th Anniversary production of The Importance of Being Earnest, revivals
of The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull, and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and
Alan Bennett’s The Old Country.
We have played in London almost every year, with seasons at the Donmar (four times), the Old Vic (twice) and
the Royal Court (twice), as well as four West End transfers.
INTRODUCTION TO THIS PACK
This education pack is intended as an introduction and follow up to seeing ETT’s performance of The
Changeling.
It is primarily aimed at teachers and students of A-Level English and Drama Studies and students in Higher
Education. We hope it may also be relevant for other further education courses or drama groups.
We have included some background information about the play, writer and the world of the play. There are
also interviews from the production team and cast, articles on the themes in the production, as well as
suggested areas for discussion, and practical drama exercises.
We hope to enhance your enjoyment and understanding of this production and offer some interesting and
useful information and exercises which will stimulate and inspire your own work.
Aisling ONeill Zambon & Anthony Biggs
3

THE CHANGELING
THE CAST
VERMANDERO Ken Bones
BEATRICE-JOANNA Anna Koval
TOMAZO DE PIRAQUO Daon Broni
ALONSO DE PIRAQUO Gabriel Fleary
ALSEMERO Gideon Turner
JASPERINO Ian Mercer
ALIBIUS Terrence Hardiman
ISABELLA Marianne Oldham
LOLLIO David Cardy
PEDRO/FRANCISCUS Leon Williams
ANTONIO Geoffrey Lumb
DEFLORES Adrian Schiller
DIAPHANTA Samantha Lawson
CREATIVE TEAM
DIRECTOR Stephen Unwin
SET DESIGNER Paul Wills
COSTUME DESIGNER Mark Bouman
LIGHTING DESIGNER Ben Ormerod
COMPOSER Olly Fox
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR Suba Das
FIGHT DIRECTOR Jonathan Waller
CHOREOGRAPHER Susannah Broughton
VOICE COACH Catherine Weate
CASTING DIRECTOR Ginny Schiller
PRODUCER Rachel Tackley
This production opened at the Nottingham Playhouse on 28 th September 2007
4

STEPHEN UNWIN ON THE CHANGELING
The Changeling (1622) is a perplexing mixture of styles and genres. From one perspective it is a classic
Jacobean revenge drama: set in Catholic Spain, it is explicit about sex and violence, mixes the tragic with the
grotesque, and offers little in the way of consolation or social reform. From another, it is an acutely
perceptive domestic drama about the conflicting claims of familial duty and sexual desire.
The play’s main plot is a love triangle; the aristocratic beauty Beatrice-Joanna and the handsome visitor
Alsemero have fallen in love with each other; her father, Vermandero, however, has agreed to marry her off to
the eligible young bachelor Alonso de Piracquo. Meanwhile, Vermandero’s disfigured manservant Deflores is
in love with Beatrice-Joanna and wants her for himself, yet she in turn finds him utterly repulsive. The
working out of these conflicting passions is the motor of the tragic action.
In their portrait of Beatrice-Joanna, Middleton and Rowley have drawn an intelligent and highly sexed young
aristocrat who is prepared to do anything, including risk damnation, to get what she desires. In her nemesis,
Deflores (the ‘deflowerer’), they show the extent a man will go to be with a woman with whom he is obsessed.
By the end of the play they deserve each other. As Alsemero says to Deflores:
Clip your adulteress freely. Tis the pilot
Will guide you to the Mare Mortuum
Where you will sink to fathoms bottomless.
(5.3)
The treatment is exceptionally acute in its psychological perception, even as it retains the highest level of
moral discrimination.
The subplot tells a parallel story, but with a comic outcome. The asylum keeper Alibius is jealously possessive
of his young wife, Isabella, but does little to show her any affection or love. Two young men, Franciscus and
Antonio, are both obsessed with her but are reduced to pretending to be mad fools in order to see her.
Meanwhile Alibius’ servant, Lollio, wants her too, but cannot get any further than sexual innuendo and bawdy
jokes. They are all defeated by Isabella’s fidelity. If the main plot shows how untramelled sexual desire can
lead to murder and your own death, the subplot shows the more common experience; that it results in
foolishness and humiliation.
Little is known about William Rowley, the comic actor who was largely responsible for the scenes in the
madhouse. But Thomas Middleton, who wrote the main plot, was one of the leading dramatists of his time,
and defies the usual characterisation of the Jacobean playwright as champion of the status quo and loyal
supporter of the King. As Margot Heinemann shows in her definitive study, Puritanism and the Theatre,
Middleton was associated with the opposition forces which would, within a generation, bring down the
monarchy. She also argues that Middleton, like Ibsen 250 years later, wrote about women of all classes with
tremendous empathy and realism. His portrait of Beatrice-Joanna demonstrates just how rapacious and
amoral certain strands of the aristocracy could be. He prefers instead to put his faith in the wisdom and
decency of the middle class Isabella, or the healthy appetites of the freethinking servant girl Diaphanta.
The result is a play which, with its cinematic technique, intercut soliloquies, and quickfire dialogue, is one of
the most theatrical plays in the repertoire. What’s more, its acute psychological realism makes it
astonishingly contemporary. Realism is the true language of the modern theatre and The Changeling is one
of its key texts. If, ultimately, it cannot share the rarefied air occupied by Hamlet and King Lear, it looks
forward to a world in which kings and queens no longer rule over us, and the intricate lives of ordinary men
and women can become the subject of great tragedy. The much despised Deflores speaks for us all:
Why, am not I an ass to devise ways
Thus to be railed at? I must see her still.
I shall have a mad qualm within this hour again
I know, and like a common Garden bull
I do but take breath to be lugged again.
What this may bode I know not. I’ll despair the less
Because there’s daily precedents of bad faces
Beloved beyond all reason. These foul chops
May come into favour one day amongst his fellows.
Wrangling has proved the mistress of good pastime.
As children cry themselves asleep, I have seen
Women have chid themselves abed to men.
(2.1)
5

SYNOPSIS
The Changeling (1622)
A tragedy by Thomas Middleton (written with William Rowley)
Set in Alicante in Spain, Beatrice-Joanna is daughter of Vermandero, the governor of the castle of Alicante.
Her father orders her to marry Alonso but she falls in love with Alsemero. She asks her father's servant
Deflores, whom she detests, to murder Alonso. He does so, but in return demands the right to take her
virginity. She marries Alsemero but arranges to have her maid, Diaphanta, take her place on the wedding
night. Deflores kills the maid to avoid betrayal.
Meanwhile there is a comic subplot (by Rowley) in which Vermandero's men, Antonio (the Changeling) and
Franciscus, both pretend to be crazy in order to gain access to Isabella, the young wife of Alibius, a jealous
old mad-house doctor. She rejects them both. They emerge from the madhouse and are charged with
Alonso's murder which happened just as they vanished.
The crime of Beatrice-Joanna is suspected by Alsemero and she admits that she ordered Alonso’s death. But
Deflores tells the whole story, wounds Beatrice-Joanna mortally, then kills himself.
Adrian Schiller as DEFLORES and Anna Koval as BEATRICE-JOANNA (photo: Stephen Vaughan)
6

THOMAS MIDDLETON (1580-1627)
Middleton was one of the most successful and prolific playwrights of the Jacobean period (alongside Webster,
Jonson and Fletcher amongst others). Like Shakespeare, he is considered one of the few Renaissance
dramatists to achieve equal success in comedy and tragedy. He was also an accomplished writer of masques
and pageants.
Thomas Middleton was born in 1580 in London. His father was a prosperous bricklayer who died when
Middleton was five. Middleton attended grammar school and in 1598 he enrolled at Queen’s College, Oxford,
where he studied from 1598 to 1601. There are no records indicating whether he ever received a degree.
He published three volumes of verse by 1600, and it is believed that he had already begun to write for the
stage at that time. He was a working playwright by 1602, and his earliest surviving independent play, Blurt,
Master Constable (1602) was printed.
In 1603 Middleton married. The same year, an outbreak of plague forced the closing of all the theatres in
London, and James I assumed the English throne. These events marked the beginning of Middleton's
greatest period as a playwright. Having passed the time during the plague composing prose pamphlets, he
returned to drama with great energy.
Middleton was an industrious writer, producing ‘citizen comedies’ and revenge tragedies for several
companies. His comedies, written for boys' companies between 1602 and 1607, include A Mad World, My
Masters (c.1605), A Trick to Catch the Old One (c.1605) and Michaelmas Term (c.1606). For the adult
companies, he also wrote A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1611), a satire which exposed bourgeois vice in
contemporary London.
He collaborated with Thomas Dekker on the comedies The
Honest Whore [Part I] (1604), The Family of Love (1603-
1607), and The Roaring Girl (1610), a biography of
contemporary thief Mary Frith.
From 1613 Middleton wrote many City of London
pageants for the Lord Mayor, and served as City
Chronologer from 1620 until his death in 1627. But he
continued to write plays as well, including his
collaborations with William Rowley; A Fair Quarrel (1617),
The World Tossed at Tennis (1620) and The Changeling
(1622).
Middleton's wildly successful patriotic drama, A Game at
Chess (1624), was closed after nine performances due to
its inflammatory anti-Spanish content and the Spanish
Ambassador's outrage. The writer and the actors were
reprimanded and fined. One of Middleton's last plays,
Women Beware Women (c.1625), was a tragedy where
the final “slaughter” scene verged on comedy, a matter
which has persuaded some critics that Middleton was also
the author of The Revenger's Tragedy (1607).
Middleton died at his home, in Newington Butts
(Southwark, London) and was buried there on July 4,
1627.
Portrait of Thomas Middleton
7

BACKGROUND TO THE CHANGELING
The Changeling by English dramatists Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, was first performed at London’s
Phoenix Theatre in 1622. The play was first printed in London in 1652 or 1653 and was popular in its day,
but then fell into neglect. The last performance before modern times was in 1668. Interest in the play
renewed in the twentieth century, and since 1930 there have been numerous successful productions in
Britain and around the world.
The Changeling is considered to be Middleton’s finest tragedy. It was common at the time for dramatists to
collaborate, and Middleton and Rowley wrote five plays together over a period of five years. For The
Changeling scholars believe that Rowley wrote the first and last scenes and the sub plot, while Middleton was
responsible for the main plot and the characterisation of the major characters.
Middleton wrote characters who defied the social norms and moral codes of their time. He wrote three-
dimensional characters, which contradict the conventional characters we may initially assume them to be.
The archetypes he does present are given further weight by being set against characters who defy
convention, for example, Vermandero and his daughter, Beatrice-Joanna. This in turns lead us to explore and
question the relationships and society they exist in. Each character has their own moral identity.
He was particularly skilled in writing female roles; women who behave according to their own will. Most
notably this appears in The Changeling; where the women are fully fleshed, complex characters who go
through a journey in the play, rather than being an appendage to the male characters.
Middleton could be described as a cynical writer, or one who wrote psychologically realistic characters.
Themes in the play :
• Madness and sanity
• The role of women and sexuality
• Class and status
• Reason and passion
• Appearance verses reality
• Human corruption
• Sin and temptation
• Self destruction
The Changeling and its Relevance Today
Questions:
• Why do you think the play was titled The Changeling?
• How is The Changeling relevant to today’s audiences?
Exercises:
• Search for stories in our current newspapers which relate to the themes in the play.
• Consider contemporary plays and stories to find examples of character’s who don’t fit into our
society’s rules and conventions.
8

JACOBEAN DRAMA
The term ‘Jacobean’ is used to describe the great flowering of dramatic writing that took place during the
reign of King James I (1603-1625). As well as several plays of Shakespeare’s maturity – above all Macbeth,
King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra and The Tempest – the masterpieces of Jacobean drama include Ben
Jonson’s The Alchemist, John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore and
Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling.
Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 and the last ten years of her reign were troubled by widespread famine,
popular rebellion, religious polarisation and a steadily worsening economic climate; these tendencies were
exacerbated by the coronation in 1603 of the divisive and controversial James. The emergence of
Puritanism, a powerful new grouping with a strong emphasis on the individual’s relationship with God, led to
an increased questioning of the social order which would reach its climax with the English Revolution and the
Civil War.
This darkening of the social and political landscape was matched by widespread developments in science,
philosophy, religion and culture. Profound questions about the position of mankind in the universe, the
relationship between nature and human beings, and the role of the divine (and the satanic) in human
behaviour all led to a growing sense of unease. At the same time, rural poverty and the rapid growth of
London resulted in an increasingly dangerous mob, while the unlocking of new economic energies and the
emergence of a new class of risk-taking entrepreneurs (capitalists, in fact) further widened the gap between
rich and poor and undermined the social cohesion that marked the middle years of Elizabeth’s reign.
All of this is reflected in the drama of the time which, in the best writers, is characterised by a restless
questioning and a refusal to come to easy conclusions. Many of its leading characters – like Deflores in The
Changeling – refuse to accept their position in the social order, and many of its stories dramatise the
divisions emerging between classes, sexes and generations. They show daughters rebelling against fathers,
servants against their masters, and human beings against God; as such these extraordinary plays are not just
unique documents of their time, they speak to any period where the world is changing.
Jacobean Playhouses
Stephen Unwin
Jacobean theatre sees playwrights moving away from earlier Elizabethan theatre and developing a more
intense dramatic style. Performances moved from the outdoor theatres into private halls. This had a strong
effect on a play's construction and staging. Audiences tended to become more elite, and a focus on wit, black
humour and subtlety replaced the previous 'barnstorming' productions which had to hold an audience’s
attention in the open air, with a noisy bustling crowd.
The ‘indoor’ theatres enabled plays to be performed in all weathers. Candlelight was used to focus attention
towards the stage, with the shadows creating a more atmospheric performance.
Plays conducted in a more formal
setting, where all spectators were
seated, led to a more formal
playing style. While old traditions,
such as males playing the female
roles continued, the actor reacted
and performed differently within
the new venues. Actors’
performance styles became
‘smaller’, and their character
portrayals more dramatically
intense.
Intervals appeared between the
plays’ acts with music and masque
becoming an important feature in
many plotlines and the plays’
imagery.
A model reconstruction of the interior of a Jacobean theatre
9

INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN UNWIN
Director
You’ve called The Changeling the greatest tragedy in English outside of Shakespeare, why?
What this play has is a level of psychological realism, amazing realism that nobody else got. It hasn’t quite got
the great grand genius of a King Lear, but it goes right inside these human beings. I think it’s more like Ibsen
than Shakespeare because it is so psychologically intricate. It hasn’t got the great rolling language of
Shakespeare or of Webster or Marlowe. It’s much tougher than that … it’s much quicker. And it has this
amazing feeling of interiority, of the inner life of these people.
There are only three female characters in the play, can you tell us about them?
And all three of them are superbly drawn. One of the amazing things is that their sexuality is so upfront … and
that the writer seems to be so intrigued by that … but not in a simplistic, moralist way I don’t think. I suppose
you could say that Beatrice-Joanna’s sexuality leads her to do terrible things … but I think it’s more that he’s
saying; this is the truth, this is real, this is passionate, and complicated things happen. But you see the
realism of Diaphanta having sex with Alsemero and staying longer than she should, it’s an astounding bit of
realistic writing … Shakepeare would never get anywhere near that … because it’s kind of, well … there’s
pleasure in that, she’s enjoying it, and that kind of stuff puts it into a modernity of understanding and
psychology.
Are we getting a slice of contemporary politics in the play too, an attitude to the monarchy for instance?
I think there are some politics about the aristocracy. It’s a huge simplification but it looks like Middleton was
a sympathiser of the parliamentary cause in the years leading up to the Civil War, which was more of a middle
class group, and it seems the aristocracy, the Spanish, are shown to be worryingly corrupt, and if there are
any virtues and values around then they are more likely to be in the middle class, or even in the working
class. Deflores is a fallen aristocrat, it’s important to remember that. I think what we have here is a sceptical
writer who sees the world in realistic terms.
How do the two plots express this and link together?
Stephen Unwin
directs Gideon Turner
as ALSEMERO and
Anna Koval as
BEATRICE-JOANNA
in rehearsal (photo:
Stephen Vaughan)
Well they are kind of thematically linked. The main plot is about what would you do for love? Answer: you get
a man killed. Then the sub-plot is: what would you do for love? Answer: I’ll disguise myself as a madman. Both
are ruled by passion … and both lead to evil and foolish things. One of the really hard things to do with this
play is to show why the mad scenes are there, but I think if you realise that love is a madness that leads
people to do all sorts of strange things, you question: who really is mad? One of things we’ve tried to do with
the set is to merge these two worlds by putting them in this great Victorian madhouse, this asylum.
10

MADNESS AND SANITY IN THE 17 TH CENTURY
Madness and sanity spins the plot in The Changeling. To understand the world of the play, it is important to
begin to understand attitudes to madness in the Jacobean period.
The Medieval belief, that mental illness was caused by evil spirits, continued into the 17 th Century. The
mentally ill were thought to be dangerous, defective and incompetent and were put in prison or locked away
in asylums. There were no professionals to take care of them and they were subject to cruel torture; being
locked up in closets or cages for being disobedient. Mental illness was considered to be irreversible. The only
people inmates communicated with were each other, and as a result of unprofessional and untrained staff,
they often became more ill.
In the 17 th Century any ‘care’ for the mentally ill was offered at such institutions as Bethlem Royal Hospital.
This hospital, the original ‘Bedlam’, was one of the world’s first hospitals for the treatment of mental illness.
It was founded in 1247 as the priory of St Mary of Bethlehem. By the 14 th Century it was already treating the
insane. In 1547 it came under the control of the City of London as one of the five Royal hospitals refounded
after the Reformation. Medical treatment for insanity was largely ineffective throught this time. Those
considered violent and dangerous were restrained with iron manacles and chains.
Bethlem Royal Hospital was only the second of its kind in Europe. It was like being in a zoo for the patients;
for a small price the public could walk through the hospital. The study of human behaviour began to increase,
but until the middle of the 18th Century there were no real advancements.
Madness in The Changeling is closely related to love, passion and lust, and the loss of reason. Beatrice-
Joanna loses reason, when wanting to do anything for her love of Alsemero. Deflores goes to the depths of his
own dark passion to win over Beatrice-Joanna. In order to win over Isabella, Antonio poses as a fool and
Franciscus pretends to be a madman. Alibius is a fool for love regarding his wife Isabella. One could infer that
most of the characters in The Changeling are mad.
The lines between madness and sanity are blurred in the two parallel worlds in the play. It is in the castle,
where all appears to be noble and genteel, that Deflores’ and Beatrice-Joanna’s hidden crimes of passion
take place. In the asylum, we see open debauchery and cruelty, yet the characters that emerge out of this
chaos most strongly are Lollio, who outwits his master Alibius, and Isabella, who outwits all of the male
characters. The Changeling highlights the obscure lines between life and death, sanity and madness.
‘Madness’ and Sanity
Questions:
• How do we define ‘madness’ in our society today?
• What constitutes sanity?
• Are the symptoms of love and passion like that of insanity?
• What is the relevance of the main plot to the sub plot?
Exercise:
• Draw up a list of parallels between the main and sub-plot.
11

REHEARSING THE CHANGELING
The Director’s Approach
Director, Stephen Unwin’s overall approach to rehearsal is strongly text based; he is thorough in consistently
guiding the actors to be specific in their scenes, to avoid generalised performances, by exploring the text indepth.
He and the actors spent a long time studying and analysing the text to discover the meaning of the scenes,
the language and to gain a clear perspective on how the scenes should be played. The actors with the
director had lengthy discussions to gain a full understanding of each character.
Practical Exercises used in Rehearsal
• The aim of this exercise is to help the actors gain a better understanding of which words and
phrases, spoken to them by other characters, their character really responds to.
Two actors who have a dialogue together, sit on two chairs back-to-back. As the first actor speaks,
the second actor vocalises their instinctive, emotional responses in modern, non-verse English, and
then vice versa.
This produces a lot of noise, and is practical when the actors in question have a strong enough
command of their lines not to be distracted by the other person speaking. This is also why they sit
back-to-back.
• This exercise is used to make the actors on stage aware of what is unusual and strange about what
actually happens in the play.
The actors are instructed to act out the ‘ordinary’ version of the scene, and then play the version in
the script. For example, at the start of the play, Beatrice-Joanna leaves a church. In an ‘ordinary’
version of this scene, she may simply walk off and go home or have merely a passing conversation
on her way, but instead she is distracted by Alsemero, who then declares that he loves her.
The Director and Actor in Rehearsal
Question:
• Choose your favourite character from the play and imagine you are an actor playing this role,
what does your character want more than anything else in the play?
Exercise 1:
• As actors, playing Beatrice-Joanna and Deflores, use the following excerpt to identify ‘wants’ on
every passage spoken. Then play the scene, literally announcing your chosen ‘want’ prior to
each section, e.g.:
Beatrice-Joanna: I want to engage you intimately – Oh my Deflores
The group should suggest ‘wants’ for the actors that feel most apt for the characters needs
and the actor must play the chosen ‘want’ as effectively as possible whilst saying the lines.
If a chosen ‘want’ isn’t effective enough, maybe it’s the wrong one? Consider why and think of
and try alternatives.
Once the group are happy with the chosen ‘wants’ for the actors, let the whole scene be played
out once whilst announcing the ‘wants’ prior to the line.
Re-play the scene again, this time not stating the ‘wants’ but going back to using the text as it
stands. However, make sure the ‘wants ‘ are still being strongly played.
12

[ACT 2 SCENE 2]
BEATRICE-JOANNA
...Oh my Deflores.
DEFLORES
How's that?
She calls me hers already, ‘my Deflores’.
You were about to sigh out somewhat, madam.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
No, was I? I forgot. Oh.
DEFLORES
There tis again.
The very fellow on it.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
You are too quick, sir.
DEFLORES
There's no excuse for it now. I heard it twice, madam.
That sigh would fain have utterance. Take pity on it
And lend it a free word. Alas, how it labours
For liberty. I hear the murmur yet
Beat at your bosom.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
Would creation -
DEFLORES
Ay, well said, that's it.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
Had formed me man.
DEFLORES
Nay, that's not it.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
Oh tis the soul of freedom.
I should not then be forced to marry one
I hate beyond all depths. I should have power
Then to oppose my loathings, nay remove them
Forever from my sight.
DEFLORES
Oh blest occasion.
Without change to your sex you have your wishes.
Claim so much man in me.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
In thee, Deflores?
There's small cause for that.
DEFLORES
Put it not from me.
It's a service that I kneel for to you.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
You are too violent to mean faithfully.
There's horror in my service, blood and danger.
Can those be things to sue for?
DEFLORES
If you knew
How sweet it were to me to be employed
In any act of yours, you would say then
I failed and used not reverence enough
13

When I receive the charge on it.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
This is much methinks.
Belike his wants are greedy and to such
Gold tastes like angels' food. Rise.
DEFLORES
I'll have the work first.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
Possible his need
Is strong upon him. There's to encourage thee.
As thou art forward and thy service dangerous
Thy reward shall be precious.
DEFLORES
That I have thought on.
I have assured myself of that beforehand
And know it will be precious. The thought ravishes.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
Then take him to thy fury.
DEFLORES
BEATRICE-JOANNA
Alonzo de Piracquo.
I thirst for him.
DEFLORES
His end's upon him.
He shall be seen no more.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
How lovely now
Dost thou appear to me. Never was man
Dearlier rewarded.
Exercise 2:
• Imagine you are a director, write an outline of a plan for a first day of rehearsal for
The Changeling.
Share your opening director’s introduction with the group.
14

INTERVIEW WITH MARK BOUMAN
Costume Designer
Stephen (Unwin) was talking about modernizing or bringing the costumes up to date. How have you done
that?
Our intention wasn’t necessarily to bring them up to date but to have a contemporary element. So that when
you first look at them, the audience has got a feeling that it’s a period play, but when you look closer, just as
the script has some quite modern bits in it, so the costume has too… so doublets have contemporary biker
jacket zips or have seams, and details that you’d find on contemporary clothes as opposed to what you’d find
on real period costumes… so we’re morphing a bit of a period costume with contemporary and making that a
new language.
How does that fit in with the Victorian madhouse set design?
Well it’s more like a crumbling mansion… that could be an ancient period castle, but again if you look closer
it’s got the odd radiator or an exit sign or some modern metal doors… so on first look, you think you’re in a
period world but on closer inspection, as you’re watching the play you realise there are some much more
modern bits there… same as with the story, it’s a sort of posh lady that gets told to marry, but she’s like
“actually I don’t want to do this… I want to do something for myself”.
How have you expressed these psychologically real and developed female characters in their costume?
Instead of being an add-on or a background character, they are very
much in the foreground, so opposed to having pretty Jacobean colours
that are quite muted, we’re putting Beatrice-Joanna in a shocking fuschia
pink with black lace …and then other colours, like her servant Diaphanta
who instead of wearing a skirt, like most women up to the 1920’s would
have worn a skirt, she’s actually in trousers but a modern version of a
period doublet on her top half.
Tell us more about Diaphanta’s costume?
With her it’s more a case of contemporary fabrics. Her colours are more
muted because she is a servant woman, a bit more working class, but
I’ve added some African influences because of who the actress
Samantha is, and then Isabella is in a shocking orange, which again
you’d never find if you look at period paintings.
Costume designs by Mark Bouman
and examples of ideas which have
influenced his designs for DIAPHANTA
and BEATRICE-JOANNA
15

Are the costumes linked in the two different
plots?
The asylum section is much more colourful…
autumnal colours, oranges and reds, warmer
colours really, while the castle is quite stark
and has a lot of blacks and grey, whites and
silver with Beatrice-Joanna standing out in her
fuschia, but generally the slightly more comic
characters having more vibrant colours in their
costume.
Stephen has mentioned how important class is
in this play. How have you represented status
in costume?
I’m playing a little bit with the chaps’
costumes… the father might be in period
breeches, while the younger guys perhaps
might be in jeans and a doublet. Just as you
might see in the street where some might be
wearing pin-stripe suits, others are wearing
casual cottons and denims, I’m using a little of
that fabric language in the costumes to
demonstrate hierarchy within the play.
Mark Bouman’s design and
inspiration for DEFLORES
16

INTERVIEW WITH PAUL WILLS
Set Designer
So, how did the design concept of a Victorian madhouse come about?
I think my initial response, after reading the play and going to see Stephen, was for this very derelict,
crumbling building. The play seemed to make sense in that world that was very distressed and old, and
broken down, and because there’s the palace and also the madhouse, we were trying to find a world that
both of those could kind of exist in. A big old mad Victorian lunatic asylum seemed an apt way of going about
things.
How does the design facilitate the two separate plots?
Through various elements: the grandeur of the set is encapsulated in the tall walls with a series of pillars
along the back wall. Through lighting, you can transform the space into being quite grand and quite epic, like
a palace, and we have lots of windows that we can bring shafts of light through that’ll work for a palace. The
squalor of the madhouse will be shown by bringing out the dirty, kind of rusty broken down elements of it and
the caged door, and the locks on the door. There’s lots of talk of alley ways and passages and labyrinths; and
to have all the doors on the set and corridors that lead off into darkness just kind of seemed to make sense
to the design.
Some aspects of the set which stand out are those which are out of date; what’s the idea behind that?
I think Steve was quite keen, quite early on, to make the figures exist in the set, as almost ghostly apparitions
of a time gone past, which is why there’s a slight contradiction between the set, which is Victorian and the
costumes which Mark is doing, which seem to juxtapose each other. They feel that they once inhabited that
space but they don’t really belong there.
The set appears to be quite a solid structure. How does it transform?
Part of the set design by
Paul Wills
Because there are so many different walls and panels; we’ve put lots of windows in the space and lots of
practical light bulbs, Ben (Lighting Designer) can really transform the space because every different surface
he can light in a different way.
17

INTERVIEW WITH BEN ORMEROD
Lighting Designer
What is your job as a lighting designer?
Well, to illuminate! I happen to believe that there is nothing quite as beautiful, or atmospheric, or exciting on
stage as the face, so my first job is to reveal that. I also have to evoke a world in which it is possible for the
events of the play to take place. Modern audiences tend to treat theatre far too literally; anything that can lift
them out of the pedestrian into the poetic is a good thing, and lighting, in this visual age, can help.
How do you begin to think about the lighting for a show?
I try to make all the artistic decisions first, and only then look at the lights I've been provided with. Lighting is
about ideas, not equipment; it's best to know what you need to do before you find out what is possible. You
usually end up being able to do what you want if the ideas are clear enough to begin with.
What's the process for you?
Of course I start by reading the play, making lists of references to weather, time of day, light as metaphor and
so on. I try not to make any choices at this stage, just ask as many questions as possible. Then I start meeting
with the director and the designer to look over the model of the set and storyboard of the show, if there is
one. I'll start sketching ideas at this stage; usually the plan deadline isn't until near the end of rehearsals so I
try not to commit myself to anything like a finished plan until I've spent some time in rehearsals. This is the
most important time for me; the more I understand what the director and actors are working towards, the
easier it is to join them on that journey. Most of my best ideas come out of the rehearsal room.
What difference does good lighting make to the production?
You start with a dark space. An actor must be seen, so you light the actor. Light is by it's very nature
atmospheric, or rather, evocative, so when you light the actor you must make a choice as to what that light is
going to evoke. Is it sunlight, daylight or moonlight? Electric light or light through water? There is another
cliché, as old as the one about good lighting being invisible, which says that lighting is atmospheric at the
expense of visibility; good lighting squares that circle by accepting that the face is the most expressive object
on stage and that light doesn't add atmosphere, it reveals it.
The dance in the madhouse [4.3] (photo: Stephen Vaughan)
18

INTERVIEW WITH TIMANDRA DYER
Production Manager
How are you involved from the initial design to the construction of the set?
The process from design through to construction starts when the production managers meet with the
designer at the white card model stage to get an idea of what’s in the designer’s head regarding the design
for the set. At that stage I’m looking at whether the design/set can be built within the budget we’ve got. Also
for ETT that meeting would also include me thinking about ‘is the idea that the designer is coming up with
tourable?’ As production manager for a touring company I have certain perameters which I have to bear in
mind when looking at a set, for example at ETT, the set, lighting, sound equipment, costumes/props etc all
have to fit in a single truck. There’s also only a certain amount of crew we can work with at each venue, so I
have to consider ‘can it be fitted up by the amount of crew we have at each venue?’. The design then gets
costed up and when we know we can build the set within budget this becomes the final design for the model
which is presented to the full company at the start of rehearsals. Set construction begins and my involvement
is to make sure it is built on time to the standard and look of the original design within budget!
What has been particular about this production?
The interesting nuance with this production is the fact that it’s a co-production with Nottingham Playhouse.
So, at the white card phase looking at the model, there are certain things that the production manager from
Nottingham would say, ‘Yes, you can go with…’ and I would say, ‘that doesn’t work for us for touring’.
An example, would be the materials used in the set, such as the floor. The floor that Paul Wills has designed
in the set has to look decrepit like broken concrete. Now, if the set was just stopping in one theatre i.e.
Nottingham, we would have probably said, ‘We can go with a painted dance floor’. Whereas I would come
from a touring perspective and say, ‘I need a material that is more durable’. We’re going to be taking the
floor up and down across eight venues and I need to make sure that from when the floor/set leaves
Nottingham to when it’s put down in the Lowry (our last venue), it looks the same and we won’t get that effect
or durability with a dance floor. So touring has driven the decision there because we’re actually going for a
wooden floor, which will be laid in sheets.
During the production process, have you had to alter any decisions you’ve made earlier in the rehearsal
room?
Yes. Last week at rehearsals it was decided that Terrence Hardiman’s character would have a desk and
some activity in the DSL (downstage left) corner. When we originally looked at a model for the set we were
going to have a set with little or no furniture and gradually more and more bits of furniture have been added.
Terrence suggested it might be an idea to have a desk in the DSL corner, which Steve and Paul didn’t
particularly want, they want Terrence to have a writing area but not a desk. The next step is to go back to the
workshops and look at what could be added to the construction. Then it required another conversation with
Paul as to what else could be put in this area and look as though it was a logical part of the architecture of
the set? Paul went away and designed a desk/shelf structure, which will live on the wall as a piece of wood
jutting out at an angle.
Model of the set by Paul Wills (photo: Timandra Dyer)
19

THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN 17 TH CENTURY ENGLAND
Marriage & Family
In the 17 th Century, the husband's patriarchal role as governor of his family and household were assumed to
have been instituted by God and nature. The family was seen as the secure foundation of society, and the
patriarch's role as parallel to that of God in the universe, and the King in the state.
Women were generally raised to believe that their spiritual and social worth resided above all else in their
practice of, and reputation for, chastity. Unmarried virgins and wives were to maintain silence in the public
sphere and to obey their father and husband, though widows had some scope for making their own decisions
and managing their affairs. At this time, arranged marriages were commonplace; parents would select their
daughter’s future husband and pay a dowry to the groom’s parents.
Religious and legal definitions of male and female roles and norms were stated in the marriage liturgy from
the Book of Common Prayer (1559) and in The Law's Resolutions of Women's Rights (1632), both of which
begin from the Bible’s Genesis story of Adam and Eve's creation, marriage, and fall. The marriage liturgy sets
forth the purposes of marriage as the Church understood them, the contract of indissoluble marriage ("till
death us do part"). The Law's Resolution collected the several laws in place regarding women's legal rights
and duties in each of her three states: unmarried virgin, wife, and widow.
There were many advice books written for women, dealing with specific family roles and duties, such as
Richard Braithwaite’s English Gentlewoman (1631), which focused on virtues and activities for women of the
higher classes, drawing attention to expectations of widows' chastity.
Real families and households were not so clearly defined. Letters and diaries from the time have shown us a
more realistic view of families, where specified gender roles were not always so rigid. Some texts written by
women reveal direct challenges to the cultural norms defining gender and household roles.
Education & Work
Upper class women, such as Beatrice-Joanna, would
normally be taught at home by a tutor. Subjects included
Latin, French, needlework and conversational skills. They
were also taught how to look and behave in a ‘feminine’
manner, and to play instruments such as the piano. It was
very unusual for upper class women from wealthy families
to work, rather they would manage the home and servants.
Working class women did not go to school or have an
education, they looked after the home, spun cotton or
worked in fields. Children and servants were bound to the
strictest obedience.
Women & Politics
The 17 th Century was not an era of drastic changes in the
status or conditions of women. They continued to play a
significant, though not acknowledged, role in economic
and political structures through their domestic activities.
Though not directly involved in politics, women's roles
within the family and local community allowed them to
influence the political system. Women were discouraged
from directly expressing political views counter to their
husbands', or to publicly condemn established systems.
Nevertheless, many women were able to make public their
private views through the veil of personal, religious
writings.
Women participated in various community activities. For
example, women were full members of English guilds;
Anna Koval as BEATRICE-JOANNA and Samantha
Lawson as DIAPHANTA (photo: Stephen
Vaughan).
guild records include references to ‘brethern and sistern’ and ‘freemen and freewomen’. Also, during the
upheavals of the English Civil War period (between 1642 and 1651), some women claimed voices in the
public sphere: in a petition to Parliament (1649), ‘Leveller’ women (a political movement) asserted some
political rights in the commonwealth; and in 1664 Margaret Fell published a rationale for allowing women to
testify and preach in church, as Quakers often did.
20

The Role of Women
Questions:
• Do women have equal rights and freedoms to men today?
• How has a woman’s role changed from the 17 th Century to the 21 st Century?
• Do you think arranged marriage is acceptable in our time?
Exercise:
• In small groups choose one of the questions from above, using the subject, develop a 3 minute
argument for or against. Then present to the whole group and discuss.
Marianne Oldham as ISABELLA
and Terrence Hardiman as
ALIBIUS (photo: Stephen
Vaughan)
21

WOMEN & SEXUALITY IN THE CHANGELING
The portrayal of the three female characters in The Changeling are radical in context of the period Middleton
wrote and lived in. They are presented in an entirely human, three dimensional and complex way; not
diminished in the role of either ‘whore’ or ‘virgin’, ‘good’ or ‘bad’. They have a strong sexuality and act out
their desires. In the play the female characters develop and learn about themselves; Beatrice-Joanna
experiences passion and sexual discovery, realising her passion for Alsemero:
‘A True deserver like a diamond sparkles.
In darkness you may see him, that’s in absence
Which is the greatest darkness falls on love
Yet is he best discerned then with intellectual eyesight…
… Some speedy way must be remembered’ (2.1)
And later an attraction for Deflores once their relationship has been consummated. She responds to her
father’s assertion that Deflores is:
‘good on all occasions’ by concurring that he is ‘[a] wondrous necessary man, my lord’ (5.1).
She also states
‘I’m forced to love thee now’,
‘Cause thou provid’st so carefully for my honour’
‘His face loathes one,’ she admits, ‘But look upon his care, who would not love him?’ (5.1)
Diaphanta is shown to enjoy sex for it’s own sake, without guilt. She spends a long time with Alsemero on
Beatrice-Joanna’s wedding night, simply because she is having so much fun. As she says;
‘I never made so sweet a bargain’ (5.1)
And Isabella has a shrewd understanding of
how to outwit lustful men; including Antonio
and Pedro/Franciscus: To Antonio;
‘No I have no beauty now
Nor never had, but what was in my garments.
You a quick sighted lover? Come not near me.
Keep your comparisons, you are aptly clad.
I came a feigner to return stark mad’ (4.3)
The appropriate behaviour for women in the
17 th Century was to be chaste and obedient.
This expectancy of chastity and submission to
one's father and husband,therefore defines a
‘bad woman’ when the rules are broken.
Beatrice-Joanna defies her father and future
husband Piraquo and follows her passion for
Alsemero. Women had few options; a ‘good’
woman's essence was a virginal body, so the
very sexuality of that body suggested possible
deviant behaviour.
In ETT’s production of The Changeling, the Director has portrayed the sex scene between Deflores and
Beatrice-Joanna in a dumb show; Deflores does not physically overpower Beatrice-Joanna, but she seems to
submit to him as she cannot see another way out of the situation she finds herself in.
Beatrice-Joanna and Deflores Sexual Relationship
Small group discussion points:
• Does Beatrice-Joanna consent to have sex with Deflores?
• Does she choose to have sex with him for her own gains?
• Does she feel desire for him?
Anna Koval as BEATRICE-JOANNA and Samantha Lawson
as DIAPHANTA in rehearsal (photo: Stephen Vaughan)
• In the production why does Beatrice-Joanna have sex with Deflores?
22

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR’S ESSAY
by Suba Das
Borrowing a phrase of Henry James, T.S Eliot’s eponymous Lady speaks of her ‘buried life’ in the 1917 poem
Portrait of a Lady. The 1917 volume, The Love-song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Observations abounds
with characters who have half-lives, secret selves and hidden imaginings beneath their surface skin.
Dramatically, the collaboration of Anton Chekhov and Konstantin Stanislavski first explicitly formalised this
idea of subtext, of characters with lives that are buried beneath what they apparently say or do in the late
19 th Century. As the great theatre critic Martin Esslin writes:
‘It was Chekhov who first deliberately wrote dialogue in which the mainstream of emotional
action ran underneath the surface. It was he who articulated the notion that human beings hardly
ever speak in explicit terms among each other about their deepest emotions, that the great,
tragic, climactic moments are often happening beneath outwardly trivial conversation.’
(Martin Esslin, from Text and Subtext in Shavian Drama, in 1922: Shaw and the last Hundred
Years, ed. Bernard. F. Dukore, Penn State Press, 1994)
However, a play like The Changeling, written some 250 years earlier than Chekhov’s works, with its disguises,
hidden liaisons and masked intentions is packed full of ‘buried life’. Accordingly, a key focus of our rehearsal
room work has been unpacking the depth of the play and finding the tensions that are really bubbling
beneath the surface.
An example from the opening of the play would be Beatrice-Joanna’s first entrance from the church, and her
first encounter with Alsemero. Apparently a very simple, coincidental meeting, this moment is in fact packed
with Beatrice-Joanna’s dangerous rebellion against both social convention and her father’s intended
marriage for her. To help clarify how loaded this moment was, Anna Koval (Beatrice-Joanna) first improvised a
sequence with Samantha Lawson (Diaphanta) of how Beatrice-Joanna might normally leave a church in
stately, austere procession. This made the risk and flirtation of the actual sequence we see on stage
explosively clear for the performers.
The interaction of subtext and apparent action comes to a climax in the scene of Beatrice-Joanna’s
commissioning of Deflores to kill Alonzo. The scene itself is loaded with asides, in which Deflores and
Beatrice-Joanna reveal their true, and very contradictory intentions beneath the apparent agreement they are
making. This very explicit creation of a subtext makes innuendo a key part of the scene – Deflores tells
Beatrice-Joanna that the thought of killing Alonzo ‘ravishes’, simultaneously disguising and revealing his
intention to claim Beatrice-Joanna’s virginity. Accordingly in rehearsal, we explored ways of staging the scene
that made the subtext entirely explicit, with lots of direct sexualisation, and then completely hidden, to
discover how to strike a balance that allowed both characters to believe they were fulfilling opposing
objectives.
The audience is primed for innuendo in the play by the bawdy fun of the madhouse scenes. Alibius and
Lollio’s first scene together is a masterpiece in apparent kindness from Lollio concealing a mine of humour at
the foolish Alibius’ expense– for instance Alibius being an ‘old tree raising himself higher and broader than
the young plants’ implies an old man with a young wife growing older through the cuckold’s horns.
Suba Das (photo: Stephen Vaughan)
In the madhouse scenes, we discovered that
this innuendo could be played for its full worth
as the sexually charged humour of this world
allowed it. However a real danger emerged in
how to handle the interplay between the social
lives of the characters in the courtly scenes, and
their buried narratives. For instance if Deflores’
obsession with Beatrice-Joanna is too apparent,
then Beatrice-Joanna’s decision to trust him
with the commission is a reckless move on her
part. Having identified the character’s subtexts
and buried journeys in the play as part of the
rehearsal process, it is important to then return
to what the action and society of the play itself
demands so that both the visible and invisible
worlds of the play hang together. As the play
proceeds to its gory climax these separations
and distinctions fall apart spectacularly.
23

CAST INTERVIEWS
1. Daon Broni/TOMAZO and Gabriel Fleary/ALONZO
What’s happened in the scene you’ve just rehearsed (See p.25 in this pack)
Gabriel Well, I’ve just been introduced to my wife to be, she’s been betrothed to me for a period of time…
I’m extremely excited to see her, and I’ve come along with my brother who is my parental aspect
right now, you know, he’s committed to look after me and he’s just watched over our first interaction
as an engaged couple…
Daon Yeah, I think basically we’ve come into the scene from two different points of view. Alonso is far
more … he’s younger, he’s less experienced … I am slightly older, more reserved and more
cautious…
Gabriel Well you were raised the first son with far more responsibility for the house, whereas I am allowed to
be more flippant…
Daon So two very different reactions to the same event … from Tomazo’s point of view something isn’t
right, something about this meeting … there’s a certain amount of ceremony, a sort of ritual and
within the context of the play we don’t get to see that when Alonzo first meets Beatrice-Joanna, and
that immediately makes me suspicious of her and her intentions toward my brother, because
ultimately I’m very protective of him, of family, of our family name, of the honour of our family name.
So I think this is me going: hold on, something isn’t right here, let’s just take a step back.
Gabriel Yeah, you’ve got a really objective view while I’m blinded by the fact that I want this girl, I want to
marry her.
Daon Blinded by her beauty.
Gabriel And I’ve got no reason to think she doesn’t feel the same way about me, so the way she reacts, it’s
like ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter’.
Daon There’s an instinctual thing as well, when you see someone and you can’t really put your finger on it,
but you feel something isn’t right, and Tonazo can’t express it because he hasn’t got any real proof.
Why can’t Alonzo see that Beatrice isn’t in love with him?
Daon Broni as
TOMAZO and
Gabriel Fleary as
ALONSO in
rehearsal (photo:
Stephen Vaughan)
Gabriel I’ve got no reason to think otherwise, I mean up to this point …our communications, she’s been
sending gifts …it’s all been ‘yes’. He’s young and naïve, but he’s not looking for faults, he’s happy
with the situation. My brother’s being cautious, I’ve got years of people saying ‘yes she’s perfect for
you, yes she really likes you’, so I’m not going to take one moment where she doesn’t bow deeply
24

enough, she doesn’t blush, whatever. I think my brother’s a little bit stern, a bit straight, he needs to
relax a little, but of course he can’t as head of the household.
Daon I think you’re right. When they enter this scene, Tomazo’s carrying all of that…
Gabriel It’s Wills and Harry isn’t it?
Daon Yeah, and this marriage is like a merging of assets.
Gabriel And she gets a hell of a lot more from marrying a Piracquo, she’s their greatest asset and
suddenly I get that, so I have something that’s mine, while he’s going to run the estate …So I’m
excited about everything, not just the girl, but about being a man and having it all… being my own
man for once.
[ACT 2, SCENE 1]
TOMAZO
So did you mark the dullness of her parting now?
ALONZO
What dullness? Thou art so exceptious still.
TOMAZO
Why let it go then, I am but a fool
To mark your harms so heedfully.
ALONZO
Where's the oversight?
TOMAZO
Come, your faith's cozened in her, strongly cozened.
Unsettle your affection with all speed
Wisdom can bring it to. Your peace is ruined else.
Think what a torment tis to marry one
Whose heart is leapt into another's bosom.
If ever pleasure she receive from thee
It comes not in thy name or of thy gift.
She lies but with another in thine arms.
He the half-father unto all thy children
In the conception, if he get them not
She helps to get them for him. And how dangerous
And shameful her restraint may go in time to
It is not to be thought on without sufferings.
ALONZO
You speak as if she loved some other then.
TOMAZO
Do you apprehend so slowly?
ALONZO
Nay, and that
Be your fear only I am safe enough.
Preserve your friendship and your counsel, brother
For times of more distress. I should depart
An enemy, a dangerous deadly one
To any but thyself, that should but think
She knew the meaning of inconstancy
Much less the use and practice. Yet we are friends.
Pray let no more be urged. I can endure
Much till I meet an injury to her
Then I am not myself. Farewell, sweet brother
How much we are bound to heaven to depart lovingly.
TOMAZO
Why here is love's tame madness. Thus a man
Quickly steals into his vexation.
25

2. David Cardy/LOLLIO and Terrence Hardiman/ALIBIUS
You’ve just been rehearsing your first scene in the play (See p.34 of this pack), what’s happening at the
beginning of the scene?
David Well, this is obviously setting up the madhouse…
Terrence I’m Alibius who runs the place, he calls it a hospital .. He professes he’s
going to cure the fools and madman, he’s going to make money out of them too.
David Lollio is his right hand man, in fact he’s the only other man who seems to be working with
him, and my speciality is dealing with fools.
Terrence And mine is to deal with the madmen. You have to remember that at that time people
went to the madhouse to be entertained, to watch the fools and madmen performing … it
was pretty cruel.
David And then my boss has a young wife and …
Terrence I’m pretty concerned I’m going to lose her, and I confide in Lollio that I am older than she
is and I’m frightened to death that she’s going to get taken away by some young fellow.
And Lollio says ‘who have you got to be afraid of?’
David Of course the number one person he’s got to be afraid of is Lollio.
Terrence But I don’t know that, I would never suspect that of him.
David No because he thinks I’m a very diligent servant.. so it sets up the storyline that he’s got a
young wife, that he keeps her trapped, and he asks me to keep her when he’s not about.
Terrence To watch where she goes and keep an eye on her.
David Which is perfect for me because it gives me more opportunity to err…
Terrence Exactly. You see I’m not afraid that the madmen will get at her at all, it’s all these young
men who’ll be after her. But I don’t imagine that these young men will dress up and
pretend to be fools and madmen in order to…
David Get at her. So he wants me to help keep her for himself.
Why does Lollio speak mostly in prose?
David Yes, us low life characters don’t get afforded the quality of poetry.
Terrence Whilst those who are middle class and up get the fiery stuff. It’s often a kind of status
thing.
David And also shows when there is actual high emotion, the verse is always there. Whereas
when there’s comedy and knock about, mistaken identities and the fun, it tends to be
prose.
This scene comes after the set-up of the main plot, how does the asylum plot balance out the other?
David Really? We haven’t read that! We don’t know yet because he haven’t seen it yet .. no it’s
mayhem really. At the beginning you hear whip cracks and shouts and screams, so it’s a
very disordered place in the madhouse, and yet through the story of Isabella she creates
order, she shows the men who try to woo her the true way of life … and the main plot goes
from a very ordered beginning into mayhem and chaos.
Terrence In a strange way our side of the story, the sub-plot, it’s a kind of comment on the main
one, similar themes are there.
David Yes, at the beginning you have two very pure women, and the choices they make in their
lives, how they are going to respond to the men who want to bed them is the main crux.
26

Terrence But it’s the unmarried one, the virgin, who slips, when my wife who one must presume is
not so …
David Yes, but I think that Lollio would get to bed her if there was one more scene …
Terrence You wish!
David Cardy as LOLLIO and Terrence Hardiman as ALIBIUS in rehearsal (photo: Stephen Vaughan)
27

POST-SHOW QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
• What were your expectations of the play before you saw it?
• How did you feel at the end of the play?
• Which character did you have most empathy for, and why?
• Who is the most powerful character in the play?
• What does Beatrice-Joanna want overall in the play?
• Is Beatrice-Joanna unconsciously attracted to Deflores from the beginning?
• How do Isabella and Alsemero’s characters act as a contrast to Beatrice-Joanna and Deflores in the
play?
• How do the lighting and sound designs enhance the atmosphere of the play?
• How does the set symbolise the world of the play?
• How do the costumes in the play help to depict the characters?
• How has the director linked the main plot in the castle and the sub-plot in the asylum?
• What image from the production has stayed in your mind and why?
CLASS AND STATUS EXERCISES
EXERCISE 1
Referring to Act 1, Scene 2, (see p.30 overleaf in pack), experiment with the status of Alibius and Lollio. Lollio
has inherent higher status through his use of metaphor and out-witing language. However, he has to take
care to maintain a seemingly lower status, so as to keep his job! Use a scale of 1 – 10, with 1 being the
lowest and 10 the highest. Explore the use of physicality and stage positioning (‘blocking’) to show Lollio’s
status as 4 and Alibius’ as 8.
EXERCISE 2
See what happens if you invert the status ranking.
EXERCISE 3
Find examples in the text, where characters use their perceived or presumed higher status through class, to
steer the course of events. Are there times when the same could be said of a characters deliberate use of
their lower status (e.g. Deflores)?
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PLACING THE TEXT IN CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGE
1. ACTING EXERCISE
The aim of this exercise is to engage the students/actors in truthful emotions, playing objectives and using
intentions. This may be useful for students who have difficulty connecting with the period of the play.
In pairs, read-through the scene below, where Deflores offers Beatrice-Joanna the severed finger of Alonso.
Now spend some time devising and rehearsing a modernised version of the same scene; still playing the
same relationship, feelings and intentions. The story is the same, but the language, setting and time are
contemporary.
Now go back to the original script, carrying through the emotions you have just experienced and anything else
you have learned.
[ACT 3, SCENE 4]
BEATRICE-JOANNA
Deflores.
DEFLORES
Lady.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
Thy looks promise cheerfully.
DEFLORES
All things are answerable. Time, circumstance
Your wishes and my service.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
Is it done then?
DEFLORES
Piracquo is no more.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
My joys start at mine eyes. Our sweetest delights
Are evermore born weeping.
DEFLORES
BEATRICE-JOANNA
For me?
I've a token for you.
DEFLORES
But it was sent somewhat unwillingly.
I could not get the ring without the finger.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
Bless me. What hast thou done?
DEFLORES
Why is that more
Than killing the whole man? I cut his heart strings.
A greedy hand thrust in a dish at court
In a mistake hath had as much as this.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
Tis the first token my father made me send him.
DEFLORES
And I made him send it back again
For his last token. I was loathe to leave it
And I'm sure dead men have no use of jewels.
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He was as loath to part with it, for it stuck
As if the flesh and it were both one substance.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
At the stag's fall the keeper has his fees.
Tis soon applied. All dead men's fees are yours, sir.
I pray bury the finger, but the stone
You may make use on shortly. The true value
Take it of my truth, is near three hundred ducats.
DEFLORES
Twill hardly buy a capcase for one's conscience, though
To keep it from the worm, as fine as tis.
Well, being my fees I'll take it.
Great men have taught me that, or else my merit
Would scorn the way on it.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
It might justly, sir.
Why thou mistakst, Deflores, tis not given
In state of recompense.
DEFLORES
No, I hope so, lady.
You should soon witness my contempt to it then.
BEATRICE-JOANNA
Prithee, thou lookst as if thou wert offended.
Adrian Schiller as DEFLORES and Anna Koval as BEATRICE-JOANNA (photo: Stephen Vaughan)
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2. WRITING EXERCISE
In pairs, spend some time reading through the excerpt below, which is taken from the beginning of Act 1,
Scene 2:
• What is the purpose of this scene?
• What does it tell us about Lollio and Alibius’ relationship?
• Who has the higher status in the scene? Why?
• What does Lollio’s use of language tell us about him?
• What is Lollio doing to Alibius in this scene?
• What does Alibius want in this scene?
Now, with your partner take a small section of the dialogue and rewrite a contemporary version in your own
words, using puns, connations and metaphors. The characters, their relationship, and the situation remain
the same.
[ACT 1, SCENE 2]
ALIBIUS
Lollio, I must trust thee with a secret.
But thou must keep it.
LOLLIO
I was ever close to a secret, sir.
ALIBIUS
The diligence that I have found in thee
The care and industry already past
Assures me of thy good continuance.
Lollio, I have a wife.
LOLLIO
Fie, sir, tis too late to keep her secret. She's known to be married all the town and country over.
ALIBIUS
Thou goest too fast, my Lollio. That knowledge
I allow no man can be barred it.
But there is a knowledge which is nearer
Deeper and sweeter, Lollio.
LOLLIO
Well, sir, let us handle that between you and I.
ALIBIUS
Tis that I go about, man. Lollio
My wife is young.
LOLLIO
So much the worse to be kept secret, sir.
ALIBIUS
Why, now thou meet'st the substance of the point.
I am old, Lollio.
LOLLIO
No, sir, tis I am old Lollio.
ALIBIUS
Yet why may not this concord and sympathize?
Old trees and young plants often grow together
Well enough agreeing.
LOLLIO
Ay, sir, but the old trees raise themselves higher and broader than the young plants.
ALIBIUS
Shrewd application. There's the fear, man.
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I would wear my ring on my own finger.
Whilst it is borrowed, it is none of mine
But his that useth it.
LOLLIO
You must keep it on still then. If it but lie by, one or other will be thrusting into it.
ALIBIUS
Thou conceiv'st me Lollio. Here thy watchful eye
Must have employment. I cannot always be at home.
LOLLIO
I dare swear you cannot.
ALIBIUS
I must look out.
LOLLIO
I know it. You must look out. Tis every man's case.
ALIBIUS
Here I do say must thy employment be
To watch her treadings, and in my absence
Supply my place.
LOLLIO
I'll do my best, sir. Yet surely I cannot see who you should have cause to be jealous of.
David Cardy as LOLLIO and Terrence Hardiman as ALIBIUS (photo: Stephen Vaughan)
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FURTHER READING
The Changeling, by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Scholar Press Limited 1973
Thomas Middleton – Five Plays, Penguin Books 1988
The Selected Plays of Thomas Middleton, edited by David L. Frost, Cambridge University Press 1978
Women Beware Women and other plays, edited by Richard Dutton, Oxford University Press 1999
Puritanism and Theatre, by Margot Heinemann, Cambridge University Press 1980
Shakespeare’s Words – A Glossary and Language Companion, by David and Ben Crystal, Penguin Books
2002
The Faber Pocket Guide To Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, by Simon Trussler, Faber and Faber 2006
So you want to be a Theatre Director? by Stephen Unwin, Nick Hern Books 2004
Online: www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/middleton/
(Site for Renaissance dramatist Thomas Middleton, including biography, works, and online
resources)
CONTACT ETT
English Touring Theatre
25 Short Street
London
SE1 8LJ
Tel +44(0)20 7450 1990
Fax +44(0)20 7633 0188
Email admin@ett.org.uk
Education & Access Coordinator
Jenny Maddox
Tel +44 (0)20 7450 1982
Email education@ett.org.uk
ETT Associate (Education)
Kate Saxon
The Changeling Education Associates
Aisling ONeill Zambon
Anthony Biggs
CONTACT NOTTINGHAM PLAYHOUSE
Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company
Wellington Circus
Nottingham
NG1 5AF
Tel: +44 (0)115 947 4361
Fax: +44 (0)115 947 5759
Education Officer
Sarah Stephenson
Tel: +44 (0)115 947 4361
Email: sarahs@nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk
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