Customer Reviews

The Beaux' Stratagem (Drama Classics)

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This ribbald comedy was written three hundred years ago and it remains fresh and funny. It is populated by such characters as the gentlemen of broken fortunes, Aimwell and Archer, a country blockhead, Sullen, who despises his perfectly delightful wife, highwaymen named Gibbet and Bagshot, a servant named Scrub, a country gentlewoman named Lady Bountiful, and an inkeeper's beautiful daughter, Cherry. You start smiling while still reading the Cast of Characters. The language is a delight, as when Mrs. Sullen cautions her husband's servant, while he's shaving her husband's head, "Have a care of coming near his temples, Scrub, for fear you meet something there that may turn the edge of your razor...inveterate stupidity." Lady Sullen ups the stakes when she determines that "one way to rouse my lethargic, sottish husband is to give him a rival. Security begets negligence in all people, and men must be alarmed to make 'em alert in their duty." When Squire Sullen catches wind of the plot, his response is embarrassment: "Don't think my anger proceeds from any concern I have of your honor, but for my own, and if you can contrive any way of being a whore without making me a cuckhold, do it and welcome." To which his wife responds, "Sir, I thank you kindly; you would allow me the sin but rob me of the pleasure."

This is a forward-thinking play for women's rights, too. Mrs. Sullen puts the woman's situation in perspective: "Were I born an humble Turk, where women have no soul nor property, there I must sit contented. But in England, a country whose women are its glory, must women be abused? Where women rule [a reference to the queen], must women be enslaved?" The plot considerably thickens when the broken gentleman who volunteers to rob Mrs. Sullen falls in love with her.

In the end we learn from the one upstanding character, Sir Charles, that "Truth, sir, is a profound sea, and few there be that dare wade deep enough to find out the bottom on't."

Hats off to Michael Kahn, Artistic Director of The Shakespeare Theater, in Washington, DC, for dusting off this play for our generation.

This version turned out to be very small with a very small type-set. However, I was more disappointed about the fact that the binding gave out about halfway through and most of the pages were loose by the time I had finished reading it ONCE. It is now bound by a rubber band.