Episode Details

A look at the life, legend, and literary figure of Mary Frith, aka Moll Cutpurse, 17th century English gender outlaw.

In this episode we talk about:

• A brief biography and its sources
• Moll’s criminal and theatrical careers
• Moll’s gender performance and its reception
• The ambiguous evidence regarding Moll’s sexuality

This topic is discussed in one or more entries of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project here:

• Mary Frith/Moll Cutpurse

Books mentioned

• The edited edition of Mary Frith's attributed diary is published as: Todd, Janet & Elizabeth Spearing ed.  1994.  Counterfeit Ladies: The Life and Death of Mary Frith Case of Mary Carleton.  William Pickering, London.  ISBN  1-85196-087-2
• Ellen Galford's novel Moll Cutpurse depicts her as enjoying a long-term same-sex relationship. I reviewed the novel here .
• The Roaring Girl by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker. The link is to a version of the text at archive.org, but the OCR version has not been cleaned up and is difficult to read.
• A full-cast audio production of The Roaring Girl is available from librivox.org. Based on a brief sample, the performance appears to be highly professional and easy to follow.
• title by author
• title by author
• I found two complete (although not necessarily unabridged) productions of The Roaring Girl on YouTube. Both are amateur productions and of highly variable quality.
  • The Roaring Girl - Noah McBrayer Jones' MFA Candidacy Presentation Fall 2007 at American Shakespeare Center's Blackfriars Playhouse
  • The Roaring Girl - performed by by the Students of West Suffolk College (sound volume is variable)

A transcript of this podcast is available here.

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)