Fluid Identities in Hannah Cowley’s Universal Masquerade

Abstract

In Hannah Cowley’s comedy The Belle’s Stratagem (1780 premiere), Letitia Hardy plays the part of a vulgar country bumpkin to disgust Doricourt, her already reluctant fiancé, and then performs a very different role at a masquerade: concealing her identity behind a mask, she creates a chameleonic and cosmopolitan persona that enthralls him. She tells Doricourt that she would become “any thing—and all” for the man she loves: “Grave, gay, capricious—the soul of whim, the spirit of variety … [I would] change my country, my sex,—feast with him in an Esquimaux hut, or a Persian pavilion—join him in a victorious war-dance on the borders of Lake Ontario … or enter the dangerous precincts of the Mogul’s Seraglo [sic]” (IV.i.59).¹ Letitia’s willingness to adopt multiple identities to captivate her beloved recalls the exploits of the chameleonic female protagonist of Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina: Or Love in a Maze (1725), who poses as a prostitute (Fantomina), a chambermaid (Celia), the widow Bloomer, and a masked mystery woman (Incognita) to serially seduce the rakish Beauplaisir. But whereas the chameleonism of Haywood’s “young Lady of distinguished Birth, Beauty, Wit, and Spirit” (3.257) leads to her pregnancy and exile to a French monastery, Letitia’s masquerade secures Doricourt’s “whole soul” (V.v.81) without sacrificing her virtue. Her chameleonic performance is liberating and empowering.²