『칩사이드의 정숙한 처녀』: 칩사이드를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the way Cheapside is represented in Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, thereby showing various contemporary attitudes to London and explaining Cheapside’s usefulness in depicting early modern traffic of women in London. To some contemporary minds, London was the organic community based on feudal hierarchies, while to others London was the predator expanding ruthlessly, accompanied by disorder and confusion, and yet to some others London was even the new Rome which was to become the greatest city on earth. These contradictory concepts of London compete and negotiate in the world of Cheapside, making Cheapside the central site of contention. Historically, Cheapside was the most privileged and prosperous market in medieval times, and Goldsmiths’ Row, its central street, was the pride of England as well as of London. However, the beauty and hegemony of Cheapside declined with the rise of the West End. This historical trend is represented and contained through Yellowhammer’s failure of upward mobility, while Allwit’s sneaky exit to the Strand shows the futility of the containment. If Cheapside seen through these two dubious London patriarchs is the object of ridicule and satire, Cheapside of Middleton in the Swan Theater is the world of comical topsy-turvy festivity as well. The ambiguity and ambivalence shown in the representation of Cheapside are also detected in the way traffic of women is portrayed in this play. In the ambivalent world of Cheapside, a virgin and a whore are not distinguishable, nor are a chaste wife and an adulterous wife differentiated. In the marriage market of Cheapside, marriage is almost synonymous with prostitution, and thus every basic assumption of patriarchy collapses. This perverted transaction of women is ruthlessly satirized in the play, but without any moralizing or severe punishment. Just as various attitudes to London compete and negotiate with one another in the ambivalent world of Cheapside, traffic of women is also depicted ambivalently and amorally in this “heart of London,” making Middleton’s last city comedy his most endearing tribute to London.