Chapter 3 - The Lustful Oblivion of Widowhood in The Insatiate Countess

Summary

The Insatiate Countess sounds an alarm against the allure of the lusty widow exploited by early modern English comedy. On the stage, the nubile widow provided the audience’s younger sons and poor unmarried men with the opportunity to fantasize about the windfall of socioeconomic privilege normally reserved for those blessed with primogeniture. Marston’s tragedy strips bare this fantasy of securing a legacy that will leave an impression on social memory. It does so by dramatizing the detrimental effects the widow’s extraordinary concupiscence has on two primary memory arts for perpetuating male identity: commemoration (the remembrance of the dead husband) and nosce te ipsum (the remembrance of the male self). For all its dire warnings, the plot’s finale, however, cannot resolve the troubling contradiction of the countess’s lustful body: the “insatiate” widow induces men to forget themselves and simultaneously and inescapably constitutes the vehicle through which patriarchal memorialization depends for its continuity.