Summary
Truewit visits Morose's house disguised as a servant of the court. He tries to dissuade him from marrying, informing him of all the terrible marriage scenarios in which he could find himself. Morose is noticeably influenced by Truewit's argument. Meanwhile, Dauphine and Clerimont travel to the house of Sir John Daw to meet Epicene. While there, Truewit arrives and triumphantly explains that he convinced Morose not to marry after all. Frustrated, Dauphine tells Truewit that the whole marriage plot has been a rouse: he installed Epicene in town in order to trick his uncle into marrying a not-so-silent woman. Cutbeard arrives and informs them all that Truewit's plan actually backfired: Morose suspected Truewit was sent by Dauphine, so he is once again set on marrying Epicene.
At Morose's house, Cutbeard introduces him to Epicene. Morose interrogates her about what kind of wife she will be, and she responds in short, barely-audible expressions of obedience. Morose is thrilled and declares that they will be married right away. Continuing his scheme against his uncle, Dauphine enlists Clerimont and Truewit to help him hijack La Foole's party, instead using it as an occasion to celebrate the marriage between Morose and Epicene. Together, they go to visit Captain Tom Otter, host of the party and the husband of Mistress Otter, one of the women attending the new ladies' college.
Analysis
In the second act of the play, myriad characters react to the central conflict of Dauphine's disinheritance, which initiates a string of convoluted and ironic plot points. True to its comedy genre once more, the expectations established at the beginning of the play are quickly dismantled when Truewit discovers that his attempt to convince Morose not to marry may have actually hampered Dauphine's scheme. Here, the play relies on situational irony to generate its entertainment, as neither Truewit nor the audience knows that Dauphine has placed Epicene in his uncle's path. Once this information is revealed, the play challenges audiences and readers to shift their expectations altogether: no longer are the characters interested in deterring Morose from marrying in order to save Dauphine's inheritance, but are now committed to ensuring that the Epicene scheme continues without interruption. Readers, then, know they will enjoy a certain amount of dramatic irony, in which the audience knows more than certain characters in the play, as Morose pursues his supposedly silent wife.
The play delivers on this dramatic irony not long after Dauphine reveals his scheme, showing Morose meeting Epicene for the first time. In this peculiar scene, Morose approaches his wife-to-be with an interrogative and inspective air; he quizzes her relentlessly about silence and the duties she would perform as a wife, all the while droning on about how important silence is to him. Indeed, despite his limited appearances throughout the play, Morose is one of the characters that speak the most frequently. Thus, this scene between Morose and Epicene puts on full display the hypocrisy inherent to Morose's character as he holds everyone around him to a standard he himself could never enact. Furthermore, the play does not ignore the misogynistic motivation behind Morose's "inspection" of his wife-to-be; the exchange reduces Epicene to an object or animal for purchase. But because of the dramatic irony of the situation (the audience knows Epicene is part of Dauphine's scheme), Morose unknowingly becomes the victim of his own ways. Through his hyperbolic interrogation, the play subtly criticizes the notion that men can evaluate a woman's fitness for marriage when they themselves are foolish and undesirable.
