At the very beginning of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s play The Changeling, noblewoman Beatrice warns her new crush Alsemero not to trust appearances: “our eyes are sentinels unto our judgments,” she explains, “but they are rash sometimes, and tell us wonders of common things.” Indeed, throughout the play’s five acts, characters’ eyes mislead them again and again. Two palace courtiers successfully disguise themselves as madmen; Beatrice’s lady-in-waiting Diaphanta pretends to be Beatrice with such conviction that she fools Alsemero; and the servant DeFlores, widely praised for being “honest,” kills a man. Beatrice herself embodies the gap between appearance and reality: though Alsemero believes Beatrice’s beauty signals her honesty and her status as a virginal “maid,” Beatrice is actually deceitful and manipulative, plotting murder and committing adultery.
In both its central narrative and sublot, then, The Changeling suggests that “eyes” cannot discern virtue or viciousness; though people praise Beatrice for her loveliness and mock DeFlores for his ugliness, both characters’ divergent external appearances conceal the same internal cruelty. But because observation can be so misleading, the play also encourages its characters (and by extension its audiences) to be patient when they judge or perceive incorrectly. After Beatrice’s father Vermandero flagellates himself for failing to see his daughter’s schemes, Alsemero comforts him that his lack of clarity is not shameful but universal. In a world of “blind men,” The Changeling concludes, no one can ever be sure of reality—all people can do is question one another’s appearances and forgive one another’s misconceptions.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Appearance vs. Reality ThemeTracker
Appearance vs. Reality Quotes in The Changeling
BEATRICE: Be better advised, sir:
Our eyes are sentinels unto our judgments
And should give certain judgment what they see;
But they are rash sometimes, and tell us wonders
Of common things, which when our judgments find,
They can then check the eyes, and call them blind.
LOLLIO: Yes, sir, for every part has his hour: we wake at six and look about us, that’s eye-hour; at seven we should pray, that's knee-hour; at eight walk, that's leg-hour; at nine gather flowers and pluck a rose, that's nose-hour; at ten we drink, that’s mouth-hour; at eleven lay about us for victuals, that’s hand-hour; at twelve go to dinner, that’s belly-hour.
LOLLIO: Tony; mark my question: how many fools and knaves are here? A fool before a knave, a fool behind a knave, between every two fools a knave; how many fools, how many knaves?
ANTONIO: I never learnt so far, cousin […].
LOLLIO: I’ll make him understand it easily; cousin, stand there […]. Master, stand you next the fool […]. Here’s my place; mark now, Tony, there a fool before a knave.
ANTONIO: That’s I, cousin.
LOLLIO: Here’s a fool behind a knave, that’s I, and between us two fools there is a knave, that’s my master; ‘tis but we three, that’s all.
BEATRICE: Methinks I love now with the eyes of judgment
And see the way to merit, clearly see it.
A true deserver like a diamond sparkles,
In darkness you may see him, that’s in absence,
Which is the greatest darkness falls on love;
Ye he is best discern’d then
With intellectual eyesight.
DEFLORES: Look but into your conscience, read me there,
‘Tis a true book, you'll find me there your equal.
Push! Fly not to your birth, but settle you
In what the act has made you, y’are no more now;
You must forget your parentage to me:
Y’are the deed’s creature; by that name
You lost your first condition, and I challenge you,
As peace and innocency has turn’d you out, and made you one with me […]
Though thou writ’st made, thou whore in thy affection!
‘Twas changed from thy first love, and that's a kind
Of whoredom in thy heart.
DIAPHANTA: Are you serious still? Would you resign
Your first night’s pleasure, and give money too?
BEATRICE: As willingly as live. [Aside.] Alas, the gold
Is but a by-bet to wedge in the honor […]
Y’are too quick, I fear, to be a maid.
DIAPHANTA: How? Not a maid? Nay, then you urge me, madam;
Your honorable self is not a truer
With all your fears upon you—
BEATRICE [Aside.]: Bad enough then.
DIAPHANTA: Than I with all my lightsome joys about me.
ALSEMERO [Aside.]: Push, modesty’s shrine is set in yonder forehead.
I cannot be too sure though.—My Joanna!
ISABELLA: Does love turn fool, run mad, and all at once?
Sirrah, here’s a madman, akin to the fool too,
A lunatic lover.
LOLLIO: No, no, not he I brought the letter from?
ISABELLA: Compare his inside with his out, and tell me.
ANTONIO: I’ll kick thee if again thou touch me,
Thou wild unshapen antic; I am no fool,
You bedlam!
ISABELLA: But you are, as sure as I am, mad.
Have I put on this habit of a frantic,
With love as full of fury, to beguile
The nimble eye of watchful jealousy,
And am I thus rewarded?
[Reveals herself.]
ANTONIO: Ha! Dearest beauty!
ISABELLA: No, I have no beauty now,
But what was in my garments.
You a quick-sighted lover? Come not near me!
Keep your caparisons, y’are aptly clad;
I came a feigner to return stark mad.
[VOICE] (within): Fire, fire, fire!
BEATRICE: Already? How rare is that man’s speed!
How heartily he serves me! His face loathes one,
But look upon his care, who would not love him?
The east is not more beauteous than his service.
[VOICE] (within): Fire, fire, fire!
TOMAZO: I cannot taste the benefits of life
With the same relish I was wont to do.
Man I grow weary of, and hold his fellowship
A treacherous bloody friendship; and because
I am ignorant in whom my wrath should settle,
I must think all men villains, and the next
I meet, whoe’er he be, the murderer
Of my most worthy brother. –Ha! Who’s he?
Enter DeFlores, passes over the stage.
O the fellow that some call honest DeFlores;
But methinks honesty was hard bested
To come there for a lodging, as if a queen
Should make her palace of a pest-house.
BEATRICE: ‘Tis innocence that smiles, and no rough brow
Can take away the dimple in her cheek.
Say I should strain a tear to fill the vault,
Which would you give the better faith to?
ALSEMERO: ‘Twere but hypocrisy of a sadder colour,
But the same stuff; neither your smiles nor tears
Shall move or flatter me from my belief:
You are a whore!
BEATRICE: What a horrid sound it hath!
It blasts a beauty to deformity;
Upon what face soever that breath falls,
It strikes it ugly. O you have ruin’d
What you can ne’er repair again.
ALSEMERO: I’ll all demolish, and seek out truth within you,
If there be any left.
ALSEMERO: I ask you, sir;
My wife’s behindhand with you, she tells me,
For a brave bloody blow you gave for her sake
Upon Piracquo.
DEFLORES: Upon? ‘Twas quite through him, sure;
Has she confess’d it?
ALSEMERO: As sure as death to both of you,
And much more than that.
DEFLORES: It could not be much more;
‘Twas but one thing, and that—she’s a whore.
ALSEMERO: It could not choose but follow. O cunning devils!
How should blind men know you from fair-fac’d saints?
VERMANDERO: A host of enemies enter’d my citadel
Could not amaze like this: Joanna! Beatrice-Joanna!
BEATRICE: O come not near me, sir, I shall defile you:
I am that of your blood was taken from you
For your better health; look no more upon’t,
But cast it to the ground regardlessly,
Let the common sewer take it from distinction.
Beneath the stars, upon yon meteor,
Ever hung my fate, ‘mongst things corruptible;
I ne’er could pluck it from him.
ALSEMERO: All we can do to comfort one another,
To stay a brother’s sorrow for a brother,
To dry a child from a kind father’s eyes,
Is to no purpose, it rather multiplies:
Your only smiles have power to cause relive
The dead again, or in their rooms to give
Brother a new brother, father a child;
If these appear, all griefs are reconcil’d.
