Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Changeling, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Appearance vs. Reality
Passion, Sanity, and Identity
Transaction and Commodification
Destiny vs. Agency
Summary
Analysis
Diaphanta brings Alsemero into a hidden part of the palace so that he can speak with Beatrice. Alsemero is impressed by Diaphanta’s loyalty, whereas Diaphanta is charmed by Alsemero’s grace. As Beatrice enters, Diaphanta hurries out.
Alsemero reads Diaphanta’s kindness to him as loyalty to Beatrice, but in fact, it is just a sign that Diaphanta herself is attracted to Alsemero. Once again, then, Alsemero cannot comprehend intimacy across class lines.
Themes
Beatrice and Alsemero talk of their love for each other. They both use religious metaphors to describe their desire, which causes Alsemero to remark on how similarly they articulate themselves. Beatrice and Alsemero embrace, but Beatrice cannot enjoy this moment of contact, knowing that her marriage to Alonzo de Piracquo is just around the corner.
The fact that conniving Beatrice and deluded Alsemero use religious language to express themselves is another of Middleton and Rowley’s subtle critiques of Catholicism. If these lovers frame their doomed romance in terms of Catholic ideas, the Protestant play suggests, then perhaps the ideas themselves are suspect.
Themes
Alsemero offers to challenge Alonzo to a duel, but Beatrice knows this will never work—Alsemero might be arrested or exiled or made into a laughingstock for daring to undertake such a challenge. In an aside, Beatrice blames herself for her ill fortune: she should have been more strategic when men were courting her, keeping her suitors at bay until she found a man she really loved.
Alsemero once again wants to live life in public, challenging Alonzo to a duel even if it means he will be ostracized. But Beatrice is always private in her beliefs; even when only Alonzo is onstage, Beatrice resorts to asides, suggesting that there is no one (besides perhaps the audience itself) that she can be truly honest with.
Themes
Beatrice tells Alsemero to be patient, and she sends him away with Diaphanta. Beatrice is left alone onstage—until DeFlores shows himself to the audience, revealing that he has listened to this entire conversation. DeFlores feels that if Beatrice is willing to transgress against Alonzo with Alsemero, she might be willing to commit other transgressions, maybe even with DeFlores himself.
This highly theatrical technique—in which DeFlores witnesses Beatrice’s private moment and then has his own aside with the audience—shows just how much dishonesty and trickery is brewing in this castle. In other words, even the audience is forced to distrust appearances—Beatrice might seem to be alone onstage, but that, too, could be a trick. DeFlores’s concept that one bad act will lead to other bad acts will be proven true as the plot goes on.
Themes
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For her part, Beatrice spots DeFlores and feels her familiar sense of loathing. This time, however, she vows to conceal her feelings—and thus to use DeFlores for her own ends. Beatrice addresses DeFlores by his name instead of an insulting nickname, and this alone fills him with joy. Beatrice then compliments DeFlores’s face, wondering if he has recently been to a physician-barber and remarking that he looks more “amorous” than usual.
This exchange shows physical appearance to be untrustworthy in two ways. First, Beatrice disguises her emotions so that she looks lovestruck by DeFlores even as she feels disgusted. And second, Beatrice begins to praise DeFlores’s face lavishly—even though she and other characters have affirmed many times that it is unappealing. But perhaps because passion is so widely viewed to change minds and behaviors, Beatrice thinks she can make her sudden change of heart believable.
Themes
DeFlores is confused by Beatrice’s sudden change of heart, but he nevertheless basks in the new compliments. When Beatrice lightly touches DeFlores, he is in awe at the feeling of her fingers. Beatrice now even praises DeFlores’s “hard” features, suggesting that his face signals “service, resolution, manhood.” This flatters DeFlores, who offers to do whatever “service” Beatrice might want to ask of him.
The sexual innuendoes in this passage would not have been missed in Jacobean times. In her attempt to tempt DeFlores, Beatrice intentionally uses his fingers and facial features as “hard” phallic symbols of his “manhood”; in turn, DeFlores is willing to “service” Beatrice (meaning both to serve her, as is his job, and to provide her sexual pleasure).
Themes
Literary Devices
Beatrice sighs, causing DeFlores to wonder what is weighing on her. At last, Beatrice confesses that she does not want to marry Alonzo; if she were a man, she tells DeFlores, she would want to eliminate Alonzo entirely. DeFlores, kneeling, volunteers to carry out Beatrice’s wishes for her, even when she insists that there will be “horror in my service, blood and danger.”
Though Beatrice is aware of gender norms and limitations, she uses them here to her advantage, pretending to be helpless—but while her sigh seems to signal weakness, it is in fact a sign of her strength and manipulative smarts. Beatrice’s final words again link “service” (with all its sexual connotations) to something bodily and scary (“blood and danger”).
Themes
Beatrice gives DeFlores gold, and in coded terms, she asks him to kill Alonzo. DeFlores agrees, prompting Beatrice to reflect that he now appears “lovely” to her. She urges DeFlores to take caution, and he reminds her that this plan will jeopardize both their lives, meaning they are linked in danger. Beatrice assures DeFlores that she will help him escape to another country after the murder is done, though DeFlores does not want to cross that bridge yet.
This exchange contains an important miscommunication: while Beatrice views DeFlores’s murder of Alonzo as a service she can buy, DeFlores sees it as a shared venture, something that will link their lives in a kind of intimate partnership. Beatrice’s focus on money and exchange exemplifies the transactional views of her society.
Themes
Beatrice leaves, and DeFlores gives into his sexual fantasies of her. Before he can lose himself entirely in his imagination, however, Alonzo enters, asking DeFlores to show him the castle. DeFlores agrees to be Alonzo’s “servant” in this tour, remarking in an aside that Alonzo is now in DeFlores’s clutches, “thrust upon me beyond hopes.”
If physical appearance is deceptive, the appearance of class and status is equally treacherous; DeFlores might look (and sound) like a “servant,” but his intentions are anything but helpful here.
Themes
Literary Devices
