Content area
Full Text
In her recent and valuable collection of George Farquhar's entire Works, Shirley Strum Kenny considers certain aspects of his play The Twin-Rivals (1702). She refers in detail to the confusion over the name given to the character of the midwife-bawd, Mrs Midnight/Mandrake. "In a Folger copy of the first edition," she comments, "'Mandrake' is consistently emended to 'Midnight' .... Although there is no possible way to ascertain whether the holograph is Farquhar's as the Folger catalogue speculated, the contemporaneity of the hand suggests a close relationship to the original production. "[1] Professor Kenny concludes that "Certainly 'Midnight' is a more appropriate name for the character than 'Mandrake.' The term 'mandrake' is used allusively, according to the OED, as a term of abuse, a narcotic, or a noisome growth; the examples tie the word to men. 'Mother Midnight,' however, according to contemporary cant dictionaries meant a 'Midwife (often a Bawd).' The tag-name, then, is entirely appropriate to the character." Professor Kenny is, of course, correct in defining "Midnight" as the more suitable name for Farquhar's character, but both terms contain sufficient dramatic signals; "Mandrake" does tie the word to a man, but since the creator of the role was the male comedian William Bullock, who played it in skirts, the visual pun would have been appreciated by the audience. Furthermore, although the name "Midnight" is a clear indication to the audience that the character is a midwife and bawd, the name "Mandrake" is still appropriate here, since in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were both female and male midwives. The significance of Mrs Midnight/Mandrake in Farquhar's play lies less in the question of the name, and more in the occupation of the character; it is the first time that a midwife has been presented upon the stage, and Farquhar's depiction gives the "drag role" a more serious treatment than it would have had at any other time in its history.
If, as seems likely, Farquhar's original intention was to call his character "Mrs Mandrake," he was emphasizing both the masculine part of the name because it was to be a "drag role," and also the unpleasantness of the character. The particular significance of this intention to make it a "drag role" will be more easily...