Gender politics and tragicomedy. Middleton’s no wit, no help like a woman’s

Abstract

This paper focuses on Thomas Middleton’s play No Wit, No Help like a Woman’s. Its intention is to review issues regarding gender roles subgenre of tragicomedy as one of the main elements of analysis in its relation with politics. Starting from G. B. Guarini’s (2008) controversy regarding the tragicomedy and its consequences in English drama, the paper reviews what changes in London caused tragicomedy be reformulated in order to both adapt the audiences and to answer to a specific ideological purpose. Therefore, it rethinks how tragicomedy evolves from Italian inspiration to be adapted by Middleton for his own purposes. It refers to the ideological controversy between Bawcutt’s (1999) and Heinemann (1982) about the political opposition of Puritans to Stuarts’ policies. Second, it refers to the description of Heinemann about the approaches Puritans had regarding drama itself, and to the changing role of men in the new social and economic perspectives in the London.