Humor in the Midst of Troubles: Explication of a Monologue by Thomas Mendip in The Lady's Not for Burning Geoffrey Yu Zhang College

Guilty Of mankind. I have perpetrated human nature. My father and mother were accessories before the fact, But there'll be no accessories after the fact, By my virility there won't! Just see me As I am, me like a perambulating Vegetable, patched with inconsequential Hair, looking out of two small jellies for the means Of life, balanced on folding bones, my sex No beauty but a blemish to be hidden Behind judicious rags, driven and scorched By boomerang rages and lunacies which never Touch the accommodating artichoke Or the seraphic strawberry beaming in its bed: I defend myself against pain and death by pain And death, and make the world go round, they tell me, By one of my less lethal appetites: Half this grotesque live I spend in a state Of slow decomposition, using the name of Unconsidered God as a pedestal On which I stand and bray that I'm best Of beasts, until under some patient Moon or other I fall to pieces, like A cake of dung. Is there a slut would hold This in her arms and put her lips to it?

Throughout the various dialogues in The Lady’s Not for Burning, Christopher Fry portrays the numerous conflicts faced by two eccentrics of fifteenth century society. While Jennet faces an angry mob of villagers, Thomas Mendip...