Script Analysis - The Innocent Mistress

Script Analysis : The Innocent Mistress

    The Innocent Mistress, a multiplot play, was published and performed for the first time in 1697. It was Pix’s second comedy, which was a farce in three acts that she had written in 1696 in response to The Female Wits. The Innocent Mistress constitutes a characteristic example of an Augustan play, with  manners and intrigue. There is a moralistic turn with respect to Carolean tradition, stereotyped plots, and a prescriptive end. Characterization and plot are overpowered by dialogue and humor, leaving the plot to be a series of complicated situations thrown together to stir conflict and humor. The interwoven love conflicts throughout the play fits “the comedy of manners'' that was popular during this time. It also fits traditional patterns of Roman New Comedy, consisting of ; prologue or exposition, epistasis, or the core of the action, and catastrophe, or its resolution. The evolution that the “happy couple” suffered from the Carolean to the Augustan period can be applied to gender relations in general and to the concept of marriage in particular. Pix’s plays move from a marriage in crisis to a celebratory ending through a corrective resolution. However, on the way to a moral resolution, men are supposed to share the responsibility with women. Moreover, like her female colleagues, she proves to be interested in the debate about gender roles and negotiation beyond the sexualized Carolean discourse.

Synopsis: 

The Innocent Mistress is a multiplot play with several interwoven love intrigues. Sir Charles is married to an older woman, Lady Beauclair, supposedly a  widow, who is very different from the witty heroines of other Restoration plays. In fact, she is presented in the Dramatis Personae, together with her daughter Peggy, as “an ill-bred woman”. Her marriage to Sir Charles cannot work since it is just the product of socio-economic interests. Being Sir Charles a younger brother with no estate, and Lady Beauclair a wealthy woman, Sir Charles’ friends and family induce him to marry her. At the end of the play, we learn that the marriage  is not valid for two reasons. Because it has not been consummated and because Lady Beauclair’s first husband, Mr Flywife, is alive and back to London after several years of voluntary exile in Jamaica. The re-encounter of Mr Flywife and Lady Beauclair makes Sir Charles free to marry Bellinda, his niece’s friend, whom he has been courting throughout the play. Bellinda, whose real name is Marianne, lives at Mrs  Beauclair’s (Sir Charles’ niece) under an assumed name after having escaped from a forced marriage. Mrs Beauclair, presented in the dramatis personae as “an independent woman”, fulfils and updates, together with Sir Francis Wildlove, the “happy couple” stereotype of Restoration comedies. The plot revolves around Mrs Beauclair’s attempts to reform Sir Francis from his initial rakishness  to his final “faithfulness”. His reform process is slow. The rake only changes his attitude and reveals his true feelings for Mrs Beauclair when, due to a misunderstanding, he thinks she has married another man. Another couple is formed by Beaumont and Arabella. The former is, like Sir Charles, a character with an “incorruptible” morality, whom Bellinda’s father has sent to find her after her brother’s death. Arabella, her father thinks, has her fortune and person controlled by Lady Beauclair and her stupid brother Cheatall. Once Arabella is liberated with the help of Lady Beauclair’s servant Eugenia, she can marry Beaumont. There is yet another marrying couple at the end, Lady Beauclair’s “ill-bred” daughter, Peggy, and the social parasite Mr Spendall, who tricks both mother and daughter into believing he is a man of quality with a fortune to  inherit. Once Mr Flywife comes back and Peggy’s fortune –the only reason for Spendall’s interest in marrying her– fades away, Peggy is punished with a lazy husband with no fortune. Likewise, Mr Spendall must deal with an ill-bred girl with no properties so far. Finally, even the servants Eugenia and Gentil marry just the way their “betters” do, thus following Roman comedy tradition. Only Mrs Flywife is left outside the marriage fair. We learn that both have been living together, but Mr Flywife, after his first experience, prefers not to marry again. Thus, when they are back in London, the former has to live with Lady Beauclair again, and the second becomes the odd one out in the comedy happy ending. 

The Innocent Mistress a Comedy, as It Was Acted by His Majesty's Servants at the Theatre in Little-Lincolns-Inn-Fields / Written by Mrs. Mary Pix., https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A54959.0001.001/1:5?rgn=div1%3Bview. 

Unknownplaywrights. “The Innocent Mistress.” Unknown Playwrights, 13 June 2019, https://unknownplaywrights.wordpress.com/tag/the-innocent-mistress/. 

Yebra, José M. “The Flourishing of Female Playwriting on the Augustan Stage: Mary Pix's ‘The Innocent Mistress.’” Journal of English Studies, https://publicaciones.unirioja.es/ojs/index.php/jes/article/view/2828/2584.