Money and Power
The impetus behind the plot of Epicene stems from money, power, and the patrilineal system of inheritance that was operative in early modern England. Because Morose was a single man with no children, his fortune would automatically be inherited by his next-of-kin male: Dauphine, his nephew. Morose's decision to find a wife and have children has little to do with loneliness, desire, or love. On the contrary, Morose seeks only to disinherit his nephew by having children of his own to whom he might be able to bequeath his money. The play hinges on Morose's decision to slight his nephew, ending with an ironic reversal in which he commits his inheritance to Dauphine after all.
Marriage and Power
There are a number of moments in the play that highlight its investment in exploring and subverting traditional gender dynamics within a marriage. The first is, of course, Morose's desire for a quiet and subservient woman to wed – something Epicene certainly is not, when she reveals herself to be first a loud and bossy wife and second a boy in disguise. Additionally, the relationship between Mistress Otter and her husband Captain Otter provides entertainment for the audience, as she maintains a distinct amount of power over him. This dynamic – in which a woman bosses her husband around and emasculates him – is an ambiguous representation of power and gender. Some may interpret it as misogynistic to the extent that a woman in power might have been intended to stir laughs among the audience. Others might see it as Jonson's way of embracing powerful women and highlighting the relative weakness of self-absorbed men.
Women's Circles
The subplot of the Ladies Collegiates is a notable element of a play that is clearly invested in representing changing gender dynamics over time. The Ladies Collegiates is a group of women who live away from their husbands and meet to discuss intellectual matters. One could argue that this group is yet another source of Jonson's comedy: that, as many in the audience may have believed, women attempting to rise beyond domestic life is an inherently useless pursuit. However, the Ladies Collegiates are portrayed in the play with marked seriousness compared to other characters (notably, La Foole and Daw). The men all desire to impress them, and they appear to wield a certain power over other characters as the events of the play unfold. The Ladies Collegiates are emblematic of noticeable change in England during the time Jonson was writing, even more so during the time the play enjoyed heightened popularity after the restoration: as women became more involved in professional and intellectual life, so too did the popular plays of the time reflect those changes, usually with an ambiguous perspective on whether those changes were to be celebrated.
Frivolity and City Comedy
Like many comedies, Epicene has a multidimensional plot. The primary plot revolves around Dauphine's scheme to get his uncle to marry Epicene. Two subplots emerge involving the Ladies Collegiates (who attend the marriage party and pass judgment on the many men surrounding them) and the feud between Daw and La Foole orchestrated by Truewit. While contemporary readers might find it difficult to keep track of so many characters and plot lines, this somewhat chaotic structure is a tenet of city comedy, for which Jonson is famous. City comedy usually takes place in London (rather than other European cities) and depicts the lives of ordinary people rather than royalty or upper nobility. It also does not centralize a happy marriage in its conclusion, as most other early modern comedies tended to do. Epicene is representative of this genre and puts the antics of its "everyman" characters on full display, even teasing its audience with the concept of a traditional comedy "marriage" before revealing that the entire plot was a rouse.
False Intellectualism
Epicene is playfully critical of pseudo-intellectual performance, espoused most notably by the two knights, John Daw and Amorous La Foole. These two characters quote extensively, but erroneously, from ancient texts and speak marred, incorrect Latin in an attempt to compete with one another and impress the women they pursue. They are, first and foremost, a source of comedic entertainment for the audience, thereby showcasing Jonson's own disdain for this kind of false intellectualism.
The Early Modern Stage
The play takes full advantage of the conventions operative on the early modern stage, conventions that, after the eighteenth century, made the play difficult to perform with the same effects. The most significant of these conventions was the fact that female characters were played by young or adolescent boys rather than women. Thus, the character of Epicene would have been portrayed by a young boy, disguised as a woman, who is then revealed to actually be a young boy. This twist in the play immediately draws attention to the conditions of its performance itself, rendering it in many ways a metatheatrical exploration of how the early modern stage influenced audience expectations for performances.
Lack of Progress
Readers might notice that the play essentially begins and ends in the same place: with Dauphine as the inheritor of Morose's fortune, nobody married, and everyone still alive in the final act. Jonson is well-known for this kind of structure in his performances: a structure that is at once quite complex, with multiple plots intersecting, and at the same time entirely stagnant, with no advancement of any of the characters by the end of the play. As such, Epicene celebrates the everyday experiences of ordinary people and their relationships with one another by temporarily inventing a world – one in which Epicene is a quiet and obedient wife – and then destroying it, allowing the characters to reconcile with this realization and find their way back to the status quo.
