Amends for Ladies: With the Merry Prankes of Moll Cut-Purse, or the Humour of Roaring; A Comedy Full of Honest Mirth and Wit; As It Was Acted at the Blacke-Fryers, Both by the Princes Servants, and the Lady Elizabeths

by Nathan Field

Amends for Ladies falls within the genre of Jacobean city comedy. Three women debate which has the better lot: a maid, a wife, or a widow. Lady Honour, the maid, is loved by her servant, Ingen, and disguises herself as a boy to become servant to him. Lady Perfect, the wife, is suspected by her husband, Love-all, of infidelity; Love-all tries to trap his wife by having his devious friend, Subtle, seduce her. A young citizen, Bold, disguises himself as an old woman to enter into the service of the widow, Lady Bright, in the hopes of gaining access to her bed. Amends for Ladies also features a duel-gone-wrong, bawdy jokes aplenty, and a guest appearance by the "Roaring Girl" herself, Moll Cutpurse.

60 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1618

About the author

Nathan Field (17 October 1587 – 1620) was an English dramatist and actor. His father was the Puritan preacher John Field, and his brother Theophilus Field became the Bishop of Llandaff. One of his brothers named Nathaniel, often confused with the actor, became a printer.

As a member of the Children of the Queen's Revels, Field acted in the innovative drama staged at Blackfriars in the first years of the 17th century. Cast lists associate him with Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels (1600) and The Poetaster (1601); a 1641 quarto associated him with George Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois. Field was also presumably also among those of the children's company briefly imprisoned for the official displeasure occasioned by Eastward Hoe and John Day's The Isle of Gulls; the latter imprisonment was in Bridewell Prison.

Scholars and critics have argued for authorial contributions from Field in a number of plays of his era, most commonly in Four Plays in One, The Honest Man's Fortune, The Queen of Corinth, and The Knight of Malta, four dramas in the canon of Fletcher and his collaborators.

His name is sometimes spelled "Feild."

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

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Reviews

[Gill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining, though with inevitable early 17C issues - rape suggested as a wooing method, generalised misogyny and the like. Still, it rattles on at a fine pace and has some good jokes, and a lot of funny smutty jokes. Nat was still only about 22 when he wrote this, and it does feel a bit adolescent.

[Milo · Rating 2 out of 5]

It felt to me, and a dazzled me it must be said, nearly incomprehensible. What I thought was an allegorical prologue was, in fact, the opening of the play. A lot of gimcrack and talk. Something like the inn business of Henry IV stretched very far indeed. Occasionally funny, though probably funnier than I give it credit. Sometimes these plots are just too serpentine to the eye. I did find the mini-Impertinent fairly effective, this time twisting real virtue out of the lady, so that she is redeemed by being unused to redemption (she has never and will never need it). Rather it is the two men who are proven equal fools for their equal suspicions. It is easy – so it seems – for a man in love to make rash decisions. This is the stated objective of the work: to no longer tie up women with the sins of men, but rather to separate jealousy entirely from its object. In that it is successful. Much of the business with Bold and the Widow passed me by, though I found the scenario of the duel interesting, and the wrap-up satisfying. I would say more if more occurred; the play slips into a dungeon in my mind whence it will (I suspect) never again emerge.