Epicoene; Or, the Silent Woman

Morose is a gentleman with a singular obsession: silence. The slightest noise sends him into despair, so he commissions a barber to find him a wife who has never spoken and never will. What follows is one of Jonson's most audacious comedies, a labyrinthine scheme in which Morose's nephew Dauphine orchestrates a elaborate deception to secure his inheritance. The catch: Epicoene, the "silent woman," isn't silent at all and, it turns out, isn't quite a woman. Jonson sustains the ruse for five acts with gleeful precision, letting the comedy build from Morose's mounting frustration, his wife's mysterious silences, and the chaos of a household where nothing is as it seems. The play originally flopped in 1609, performed by a troupe of boy actors, but it found its audience after the Restoration and has been delighting audiences ever since. It's sharp, wordy, and deeply strange: a comedy about the things we think we want and the disasters that follow when we get them.