Understanding Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor by Robert A. Albano - HTML preview

moral depravity that underlies it.

The other buffoon in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside is Allwit. The characteristics of this buffoon are chiefly indicated in a long soliloquy toward the beginning of the play (I, ii: 12-56). Allwit is a successful buffoon: he rejoices that Sir Walter bears all his expenses and all his worries (chiefly, that of jealousy – Allwit cares not that his wife sleeps with anyone else, but Sir Oliver is frequently concerned about it).

Oh, two miraculous blessings! ‘Tis the knight Hath took that labor all out of my hands.

I may sit still and play; he’s jealous for me, Watches her steps, sets spies. I live at ease;

He has both the cost and torment. When the strings Of his heart frets, I feed, laugh, or sing. (I, ii: 51-56)

Allwit is as morally corrupt as Touchwood Sr. But Allwit’s moral failing is sloth and greed, as opposed to Touchwood’s lust. But Middleton does not utilize his buffoons for the purpose of supplying any moral lesson. At the end of the play (V, i), with Sir Oliver no longer able to support them, the Allwits decide to rent out their house (which Sir Oliver had so richly furnished) to aristocrats. And, thus, Allwit can continue to live a lazy life of ease without worrying about anything. And, as described above, although Touchwood Sr. worries throughout most of the play about the consequences of his lust, at the end of the play he is well provided for. The buffoon, then,