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The Changeling
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Themes
Religion and Sin
The religious symbols and allusions replete throughout The Changeling serve two purposes: They support the play’s critique of Catholic Spain and emphasize Beatrice’s moral fall. The Changeling was originally performed in 1622, a time when many in Jacobean England—which was predominantly Protestant—were suspicious of Spain. King James I of England ruled with a policy of peace and tried to align with Spain through several royal marriages. However, these policies were unpopular among the public and faced critique in literature produced during the period. By setting The Changeling in Alicante, Spain, Middleton and Rowley write characters who uphold Spanish Catholic ideals. However, these characters fall toward madness and sin as the play progresses. The tragic crimes and strong religious allusions outlined in the play offer a negative critique of Spanish society and England’s proposed alliance with the country.
The play also develops religious allusions to condemn Beatrice’s actions and emphasize her fate, which represents the fall of man and “original sin.” The play establishes its religious commentary by starting outside a church, where Alsemero falls in love with Beatrice. Beatrice is portrayed as beautiful and virtuous, comparable to “man’s first creation” (1.1.8). Alsemero intends to marry Beatrice, legitimizing his attraction to her in the eyes of God. However, as the play unfolds, these honorable intentions descend into deception and sin.
Beatrice’s corruption is comparable to Eve’s corruption in the Garden of Eden. When Beatrice employs De Flores for Alonzo’s murder, she effectively makes a deal with the devil. De Flores, with his fall from high society into servitude and ugly appearance, is often described as a “serpent” (1.1.228; 5.3.66), alluding to the devil/serpent from Eden. De Flores indeed cashes in on his devil-deal by demanding Beatrice’s virginity as reward for murdering Alonzo. De Flores instigates both a moral and sexual loss of innocence for Beatrice, just as the serpent coaxes Eve to taste Eden’s forbidden fruit. More destruction and sin follow: Beatrice becomes further entangled with De Flores, leading first to Diaphanta’s murder, then to both De Flores and Beatrice’s deaths in the final scene. As Beatrice and De Flores confess their crimes, Alsemero calls the two “cunning devils” (5.3.108), showing that Beatrice and De Flores are now equally corrupt. The characters are all “left in hell” (5.3.163) from hearing the horrible crimes confessed. However, the deaths of Beatrice and De Flores bring justice to the house and purge their sin from the castle.
Love and Madness
The subplot set in Alibius’s mental asylum accentuates the relationship between love and madness in The Changeling. The characters in both plots find that their passions drive them to act like lunatics—to comedic effect in Alibius’s world, and to tragic effect in Vermandero’s. The intensity and drama of the main plot is interspersed with moments of madness and chaos from the subplot, until the lines between the asylum and the castle begin to blur.
The madness of love in the subplot is clear: Antonio and Franciscus pretend to be asylum patients to woo Isabella without Alibius realizing. While they wait for their chance to speak to Isabella in private, they throw themselves into their lunatic performance: They speak nonsense, sing, and dance along with the true asylum patients. However, when they drop their disguises and confess their love to Isabella, their words are no less insane. For example, Franciscus confesses his true identity yet still claims to be mad in his love for Isabella: “I remain—mad till I / speak with you, from whom I expect my cure” (4.3.28-29). This play on madness argues that love itself is a mad affliction that causes lovers to act out of character until they can be “cured” by joining with their lover.
De Flores describes his attraction to Beatrice using similar language. He tells her, “I’m in pain / And must be eased of you” (3.4.98-99), and he describes his pains as “lovers’ plagues” (3.4.150). His possessive love for Beatrice drives him to murder and bloodlust, until he finally kills himself and Beatrice. The characters seem controlled by their emotions, as if their compulsions are driving them mad. This is also true for Beatrice, who blames her hatred for De Flores on her “infirmity” (1.1.111) since she cannot explain why she feels so disturbed by him. Despite her negative feelings for De Flores, however, she’s driven to “kiss poison,” meaning De Flores, and become “a cruel murd’ress” (5.3.65-66) out of love for Alsemero.
In Act IV Isabella exclaims: “Does love turn fool, run mad, and all at once?” (4.3.2) after receiving a love letter from Franciscus revealing his identity. This line holds equally true for the events unfolding in the main plot. In The Changeling love drives the characters to abandon their morals and virtue and instead act like lunatics to obtain their desire. In the end, more madness is found in Vermandero’s castle than in Alibius’s asylum.
Women’s Agency in Patriarchal Society
The Changeling is set in a patriarchal society where men police women’s bodies and women have little agency. The play’s first two scenes introduce two trapped women: Beatrice, whose father has the final say on whom she marries, and Isabella, whose jealous husband decides to lock her up with his asylum patients. While Beatrice and Isabella experience different fates, their mutual entrapment highlights women’s place in this society.
Beatrice’s tragic actions most clearly demonstrate the tension between women’s agency and men’s control of women. Beatrice is a strong-willed character determined to marry the man she wants: Alsemero. However, as a woman of her time, Beatrice is left without many options. She laments being born a woman instead of a man, without power to follow her desires:
Would creation—[…]
Had formed me man [...]
O ‘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 ‘em
For ever from my sight (2.2.107-13).
Men are free to choose whom they marry and even commit murder with less scandal than women face for the same actions. Nonetheless, Beatrice plots a scheme to achieve her desires. By employing De Flores to murder Alonzo and using flattery to manipulate him to do her bidding, Beatrice exercises a subversive agency and manages to remove Alonzo from her life.
These efforts, however, come at a high cost. Whenever Beatrice exercises agency in the play, it’s met with backlash and punishment. Both De Flores and Alsemero brand Beatrice a “whore” (3.4.142; 5.3.31; 5.3.107) for her actions and further entrap her in sin. De Flores coerces Beatrice into sleeping with him and giving her virginity as payment for his murder, believing his service to Beatrice grants him the right to possess her. Since Beatrice instigated the crime of murder, her patriarchal society demands her sexual damnation must follow as well. At the play’s conclusion, De Flores completes his domination and possession of Beatrice’s body by killing her.
Alsemero likewise tries to exert control over Beatrice’s body and agency. He possesses potions that reveal women’s bodily secrets—such as virginity or pregnancy—and secretly gives Beatrice a virginity test to reveal whether she’s a faithful bride. Beatrice combats this control by tricking Alsemero, thereby keeping her secrets private. However, Alsemero eventually discovers Beatrice’s crimes and denounces her. Although Alsemero was prepared to kill Alonzo in a duel, he decides Beatrice’s crimes are unforgivable and condemns Beatrice for turning their marriage bed in a “charnel” and their sheets into “shrouds / For murdererd carcasses” (5.3.83-84). For Alsemero, Beatrice’s role in murder and her adultery are equal crimes. While men may murder and remain honorable, a female murderess becomes entrenched in sexual corruption, sin, and dishonor.
Alsemero responds to Beatrice’s crimes by making Beatrice his “prisoner” in his closet (5.3.86), much like how Alibius imprisons Isabella due to fear she will commit a similar crime of adultery. Alsemero allows De Flores to join Beatrice in the closet, giving De Flores the opportunity to kill Beatrice and seal their fates. Thus, Alsemero plays a role in Beatrice’s death as punishment for her actions. Beatrice’s ultimate struggle for agency throughout the play manifests through her body’s domination and entrapment by men, including her father, who controls who Beatrice marries and sleeps with; her husband Alsemero, who feeds her virginity test potions and fatally imprisons her; and lastly De Flores, who takes Beatrice’s virginity through blackmail and displays his twisted love by killing her.
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