11th Play - 7/11/23 - A Bold Stroke for a Husband by Hannah Cowley

Okay, I know I promised contemporary plays, but … some people are focused on the “classics.” And who doesn’t love a great costume piece! Anyway, I had been wanting to read this one for a while since it was written, not by Shakespeare or Goldsmith or any of those folks, but a FEMALE. We should make this part of the “canon!”

Summary: "If you're looking for a classic comedy like Taming of the Shrew, dive into this romp featuring five bold women with strength and agency instead! While Olivia takes on various unattractive qualities to un-suit her various suitors (despite her frustrated father’s attempts to marry her off), Laura and Victoria are wooing each other – yet competing with each other – both in an effort to best Don Carlos. A Bold Stroke for a Husband has the levity and hijinks of a Shakespearean comedy with the feminist attitudes of a much more modern piece, combining the best of Shrew and Twelfth Night in one tight, funny, uplifting narrative." (Expand the Canon)

Loved: Just as much fun as any of the silliness in Shakespeare, this would be a great addition to the canon. It was written in 1783 by, gasp, A WOMAN!!! There is fabulous cross-dressing, wooing and, ultimately much silliness, not to mention a perfectly matched happy ending. I LOVED that there were five main female characters who are clever and charming and drive the plot. The men are targets of these fabulous women, and they are no match for the women's plotting. It's in prose and reads pretty easily, although I'd much rather see a production of it to understand who was fooling who. I enjoyed that even the courtesan has power in this piece. I think Olivia was my favorite - pretending to be a “shrew” in order to keep away the suitors she didn't want, in order to get the one she did. I also appreciated the note before the play in the remarks (from the Project Gutenberg version I read) talking about how plays were set in foreign countries to give license for the characters to "present certain improbabilities to the audience, without incurring the danger of having them called such." I did not know this before, although I probably should have. As someone who learned how to read Shakespeare on my own, with minimal instruction by a professor, this was new information to me (or maybe I’d forgotten?). This English play is set in Spain, which apparently seemed extraordinarily mysterious to many English folk at the time, so they didn't have any problem accepting all the shenanigans, of which there are many. In addition to that, there was one other thing that surprised me. Don Caesar, Olivia's father, goes through the ruse of attempting to get engaged to a nineteen year-old in order to get his daughter to marry (gross and manipulative, yes). But, I appreciated that the playwright made the character a little creeped out to have to marry someone so young. Also Cowley allowed the girl to tell the old man exactly what she thinks about having to marry him, and the two engage in another plot twist by pretending that the marriage will happen, even though neither of them really want it.

What I didn’t Love: Well, the whole play is kind of about getting a husband, even though one of the characters is kind of trying to get hers back. So, the misogyny is still there. Understandable based on the fact that it was written in 1783, and literally the only means of survival for most women was to get married. At least these women are trying to find husbands that they love, not just for money, although frankly for the time period that would be understandable, even if we look at it askance in our time where women actually can be self-sufficient. That all being said, there's a little too much about women being controlled by their fathers and needing husbands. I don't know if we need to put that misogyny out in the world any more.

Overall: If you have to do a classical play, this is a good one. It offers great female roles, all with agency, and the men are more pawns for the women than the opposite for a nice change. It's not terribly deep, but it's fun, and would be enjoyable to watch, I think. That being said, the misogyny of the time it was written is still highly present in the piece in the fact that most of the women are working to get husbands and the fathers are all trying to control their daughters. This play cleverly pokes at that misogyny by having the women outwitting the men, but it's still there. Note that the title is a comment on Susanna Centilivre's 1718 play A Bold Stroke for a Wife, which, according to everything I've read is a much better play. I guess I'll have to read that one too ...

Here’s a link to Google Sheets with more info about the play: Play a Day Sheet