Moll Davis: A Comedy
London, 1661. The Restoration has loosened the Puritans' grip on England, and the country's great coaching inns have become theaters of chaos, romance, and roguery. At "The Mischief" Inn, where Oxford Street meets the old Roman road, a young woman named Moll Davis has overstayed her welcome by rather more than is comfortable. She cannot pay her bill. She cannot go home. And she is far too clever and ambitious to accept either fate. Bernard Capes delivers a sparkling period comedy that reads like a Jacobean farce filtered through sharp early-modern wit. Moll is bankrupt in more ways than one, yet she possesses exactly the qualities this new, decadent England rewards: charm, cunning, and an irrepressible talent for banter. As she negotiates with the inn's landlord, evades her creditors, and trades barbs with the cavalier George Hamilton, she reveals herself to be both survivor and schemer, navigating a world where every favor carries a price and every smile masks calculation. The result is a delightful portrait of Restoration London as a place of opportunity and danger, where a clever woman with nothing but her wits might still engineer her own fortune. Capes writes with evident affection for the period's texture and its lively contradictions, crafting a comedy that zings with dialogue and period atmosphere.
