‘Women Beware Women’

Abstract

The earliest printed edition of the play is dated 1657, and was issued bound together with another Middleton play, More Dissemblers Besides Women. Although the two titles may have suggested a likely combination to the publisher, and although it has been suggested recently that both plays deal with issues of topical polititical concern, the plays are very different in tone. More Dissemblers, written around 1615, is one of Middleton’s tragicomedies (see chapter 6), whereas Women Beware Women is a sharp analysis of the inextricable links between power, sex and money. In this it more closely resembles Middleton’s early comedies, and Margot Heinemann’s description of it as a ‘city tragedy’ is apt.¹