It is theoretically possible, one supposes, for a modern audience outside of England to enjoy Thomas Shadwell’s play Bury Fair for a variety of different reasons. Alas, outside the theoretical, however, it seems unlikely. (Well, that’s not entirely true. Anyone who enjoys the absurd sight of Francophiles being ridiculed can certainly enjoy the play any time La Roch appears on stage, but those appearances are too infrequent and audaciously absurd to create a real connection with the story.) If one grows up steeped in the particularly British tradition of the titular “Fair” and thus arrives with immediate understanding of the significance of that element of the plot, then the theory suggests a far broader ability to appreciate the nuance and subtext of the play. Failing that, however, (and standing outside the enjoy of watching the French and all those who love them being demeaned) there seems just one reason to even bother staging this rarely produced example of Restoration/Glorious Revolution British drama. And her name is Gertrude.
Ever notice how one doesn’t come across many women named Gertrude anymore? That is really a shame considering that some really memorable literary characters in British drama shared that name. There is Hamlet’s mother, of course. But she’s memorable mostly for wrong reasons. Thomas Shadwell’s Gertrude is one of the truly impressive creations in drama—a character worthy to stand alongside some of Shakespeare’s more impressive female characters like Beatrice, Rosalind, Viola and Isabella—right up until her very last lines. Alas, all the goodwill and street cred that Gertrude has built up as a model of pre-feminist cheekily anti-patriarchal independence from the oppressive authority of male dominance slips melts into the stage like the Wicked Witch of the West meeting with water during her final appearance.
A shame, really since up to then Gertrude has not only positioned herself a non-masculine portrait of female empowerment, but she has—like Beatrice—managed to get almost all the best lines in the play. That she is going to be a force to reckon with is announced with her introductory scene, a mini-monologue spelling out succinctly almost everything about her character:
“Well, I am wear of the Life I lead here, never poor Creature was Teaz’d, as I am still, with the my Stepmother, and her Daughter, the Old Cucko and the Young, that tire me continually with the same Notes of Wit and Breeding: And having themselves nothing but Folly and Affection, are always reproaching me for want of both.”
She is misunderstood by those endowed with “wit and breeding” because she rejects the idea of marriage on principle. She certainly doesn’t indulge the wishes of the majority by attaching the newly won British Bill of Rights to her own declaration of rights as a woman in a man’s world: “I am a free Heiress of England, where Abitrary Power is an at an end, and I am resolv’d to choose my self.” Considering that this play is a romantic comedy more than it is anything else, it is perhaps inevitable that such a non-conformist will end by rejecting that independence and accepting the rake’s hand in marriage. What is surprising is that she makes this sickening transformation of her own accord and seemingly without motivation:
“And know, for all my vaporing, I can obey, as well as e’r a meek, simpering Milksop on ‘em all; and have ever held Non resistance a Doctrine fit for all Wives, tho’ for nobody else.”
What she means there, in case it isn’t clear, is that she will become the perfect submissive wife because that is the natural state of wives, but not the natural state of anyone else. This unexplained transformation makes for a relentlessly depressing plot twist of such profound irritancy that it is possible for a brief moment to actually hate Gertrude. But only for a moment because then we remember that this is not the work of Gertrude the character, but Thomas Shadwell the creator. With that ending, Bury Fair winds up having something profound to say about free will, determinism, and the unhealthy influence of Puritanism among British literature during the period this play was composed.
