The Changeling: Satire 2 key examples

In the subplot of the play, a young gentleman named Antonio recruits his friend Pedro to help him impersonate a “madman” and check in to an asylum run by Alibius, where Antonio hopes to get closer to Alibius’s beautiful young wife, Isabella. The scene offers a comedic satire of early modern legal authorities. Lollio, who works for Alibius, promises Pedro that he will raise Antonio to become sufficiently intelligent to run his family’s business: 

LOLLIO : He will hardly be stretched up to the wit of a magnifico.

PEDRO : Oh no, that’s not to be expected, far shorter will be enough. 

LOLLIO : I’ll warrant you [I’ll] make him fit to bear office in five weeks; I’ll undertake to wind him up to the wit of constable. 

PEDRO : If it be lower than that it might serve turn.

LOLLIO : No, fie, to level him with a headborough, beadle, or watchman were but little better than he is; constable I’ll able him: if he do come to be a justice afterwards, let him thank the keeper. Or I’ll go further with you; say I do bring him up to my own pitch, say I make him as wise as myself. 

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After calling for De Flores to murder Alonzo, Beatrice is finally able to marry her beloved Alsemero. Her wealthy father, Vermandero, requests a group of “madmen” and “fools” from the asylum to dance at the wedding. In depicting Alibius as eager to make a profit off of those under his care, Middleton and Rowley offer a biting critique of the mental asylums of their day: 

We have employment, we have task in hand; 
At noble Vermandero’s, our castle-captain,  
There is a nuptial to be solemnized – 
Beatrice-Joanna, his fair daughter, bride, – 
For which the gentleman hath bespoke our pains:
A mixture of our madmen and our fools 
To finish, as it were and make the fag 
Of all the revels, the third night from the first; 
Only an unexpected passage over, 
To make a frightful pleasure, that is all, 
But not the all I aim at.  

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