A Woman Killed With Kindness

In Act IV, time passes again, as Scene 1 opens with Charles in York Castle’s debtor’s prison, “his garments all ragged and torn” (176), which implies that he has been in prison for some time. Likewise, Scene 5 reveals that Frankford and Anne now have children. These jumps in time emphasize the significance of the characters’ bonds and hardships. Wendoll and Frankford, for example, have been friends for several years, while Charles could have spent months at a time in jail and prison.

Frankford’s response to discovering Anne and Wendoll together raises questions regarding the appropriateness of violence and The Limitations of Forgiveness Following Betrayal. When a maid stops Frankford from killing Wendoll, Frankford says, “I thank thee, maid; thou, like an angel’s hand, / Hast stayed me from a bloody sacrifice” (188), referencing Genesis 22: 10-11, when an angel stops Abraham from killing Isaac as a sacrifice. The biblical allusion frames the maid’s intervention as fortunate but does not exactly condemn violence: At least in Frankford’s eyes, Wendoll’s death would be a “sacrifice,” not murder, much as Abraham was poised to kill Isaac in obedience to God. The implication is that there is a moral code that justifies, or even demands, Wendoll’s death, in much the same way that the play later suggests that Frankford would be justified in killing Anne. Conversely, the play raises doubts from the start as to whether what Anne calls Frankford’s “mild sentence” truly is merciful. Certainly, Frankford himself does not frame it as such, bluntly stating that he intends to punish Anne more severely by seeming to show her kindness: “[W]ith usage / Of more humility [I will] torment thy soul” (191). The potential cruelty of Frankford’s actions does not necessarily detract from his characterization as a noble figure, as the era’s social norms give him the right to discipline his wife, but it does complicate it.

Another wrinkle in the theme of Marriage and Gender Roles in a Patriarchal Society involves Anne’s reaction to Wendoll when Frankford pretends to leave for the night. Wendoll is excited to sleep with Anne, who protests, but Wendoll says Anne is being “too like a puritan” (184). Despite the accusation of prudishness, Anne continues to make her reluctance clear: 

You have tempted me to mischief, M. Wendoll:

I have done I know not what. Well, you plead custom;

That which for want of wit I granted erst,

I now must yield through fear (184). 

While the relationship between Anne and Wendoll borders on nonconsensual by modern standards, it would have read as seduction at the time. Anne blames Wendoll for the affair, claiming that she acted thoughtlessly when she first slept with him (an admission that links her mistake to Charles’s, as she was acting under the influence of strong emotion). Now, Anne is afraid to reject Wendoll since he could easily harm her or expose her to Frankford, but as she does not rebuff Wendoll outright or attempt to remove herself from the situation (as Susan does with Francis), audiences at the time would have understood her to be a participant in the affair. For such audiences, the significance of her resistance would lie not in what it says about the relationship but in what it says about Anne herself; her desire to extricate herself from the situation creates pathos, laying the groundwork for a tragic death by showing that Anne retains a sense of modesty, honor, etc. That said, a contemporary reading of the scene reveals the impossibility of Anne’s position relative to the era’s gender roles: Having been unfaithful once, she has no pathway to social redemption and therefore little choice but to double down on her transgression.