City Madam

A waspish city comedy, critiquing Caroline London, "The City Madam" reworks Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" as a city comedy to attack the vices of hypocrisy, greed, self-indulgence and social pretension that destroy communality. As the citizen Sir John Frugal and his daughters' spurned suitors return disguised as Amerindians, Massinger contrasts their feigned godlessness with the failure of Christian charity in 1630s London. The play was revived for a staged reading at Shakespeare's Globe in June 1995.