More Meta Moments

I think this speech from Beatrice in the first scene falls into that category of comments made from a place where the play we are reading is very aware that it is a play we have often commented on in class. Here, Beatrice's warning to Alsemero is really all but a reminder to the audience not to take everything they are seeing and will soon see performed at face value. I feel Beatrice here is warning the audience that to be fully participating observers, capable of getting the most from their theatre-going experience, they must not be content to just sit back and passively watch the action going on onstage. Her reasoning is that if they do, they will be easily led astray by the outward appearance of things and when they finally do allow their judgements a word in edgewise, they will see that they have all been fooled by the "common" devices of the theatre. I think that it is very interesting that such an appeal to the audience's shreweder thinking is being done here by a woman. I do not think that it is a terrible stretch to look at this play, following around forty years after The Duchess of Malfi, as continuing the trend found in Webster's work: namely that of there being room for strong, intelligent female roles in Renaissance drama where there previously were few to none.