Jonson's use of the fear of theater and the fear of what is feminine often intertwine throughout "Epicoene." The actors genders, and the roles that they play are embedded by every nuance of character and their outcomes. Shakespear's Twelfth Night does not conclusively equate the fear of femininity to the fear of theatricality. He uses theatricality as a comedic device but in the character of Malvolio, Olivia's somber servant, which embodies the Puritanical anti-theatrical gender defining is not the main object: rather his own social advantage. .
Feminity .
Jonson takes it a step further by Morose's inquisition of Epicoene's own womanhood. To Morose women are inextricably accompanied by a world of tortuous racket. As Truewit attempts to scare Morose out of a marriage with a "normal woman" and into a marriage with a "silent woman" he describes the former's doomed, noisy life by listing subjects upon subjects women dwell in conversations at great lengths in: .
. and.
have often in her mouth the state of the question, and then.
skip to the mathematics and demonstration: and answer.
in religion to one, in state to another, in bawdry to a third.
(2.2.112-115) .
This horrifies Morose very comically. But what underlies all of Truewit's comments towards women are the stereotypes that fuel misogyny. Namely that women are interested primarily in money, cheat freely and often, and are counting the days til their husband's deaths (2.2). The subject manner in which Truewit describes women, though offensive, can also be applied to theater. Theater is bawdry, political, talkative, sexual creatures. Morose's abject horror of all these things women appropriately can be applied to all things theater. .
Morose's attack upon noise is an attack upon theater itself. What is theater if not the opposite of lifeless, still silence? Femininity is the veins in which art, music, poetry and drama course through. His affection for a silent Epicoene is an embracing of those same anti-theater features of silence.
