What is The Cuck-Queans’ and Cuckolds’ Errands about?
An anti-warfare, anti-marriage, and pro-free-love closeted satire.
A single vengeful cuckold is tragic, whereas many cuck-queans and cuckolds running across England on their love-errands is satiric. The title of this play announces why it remained closeted across the Renaissance, as it trivializes adultery in a period that continued to see revenge-killings by cuckolds. The story opens with two aristocratic married couples swinging partners, as Doucebella cheats with Floradin, while Floradin’s wife, Aruania, cheats on him with Doucebella’s husband, Claribel. Tired of these complications, Floradin and Claribel become soldiers in the war against the approaching Spanish Armada. And Aruania and Doucebella unite in an apparent lesbian affair. The gentlemen then begin seducing a muscular forest-keeper, Olivel, while the ladies work on seducing her forester husband, Latro. Meanwhile, Nim and Shift, two thieves, attempt a range of frauds and tricks to steal a newly-made bowl from Pearle, Doctor of Civil Law. And Pigot, Master of the Tarlton Inn, has tricks and legal reprisals that he uses to force Nim and Shift to pay their growing bill. Under this satirical, absurd and comic surface full of misadventures, there are many exquisite poetic passages, such as the recounting by Captain Lacy of how the British troops fought against the Spanish Armada. There are fights, robberies, and a wealth of legal and historical insights heavily packed into every line of this drama.
“It is tempting to read Cuck-queans and Cuckolds Errands superficially, to enjoy its façade, which has been much enhanced by Faktorovich’s extensive and erudite introduction and footnotes./ Frankly, without those and without her careful modernization of language, the original work would be nearly unreadable. At that superficial level, the reader finds much enjoyment in its satire and slightly puerile humor. Human coitus, especially if illicit, is after all, the world’s most fascinating and enduring topic./ The cuckoo is a bird of European origin, about the size of a robin who displays the disconcerting habit of laying eggs in another bird’s nest. The derivatives ‘cuckold’ and ‘cuck-quean’ describe a usurper or supplanter, hence one who practices the pleasures of venery outside the boundaries of holy matrimony. And the drama Cuck-queans and Cuckolds Errands is about just that, obsessive and nearly random fornication./ But there is a deeper level to Cuckolds. The reader wishing to access that level might do well to first read Jokes and their Relation to the Subconscious by Sigmund Freud. All of human vulnerability and sexual peccadillos, deviant and sanctioned, are displayed in this writing, which was self-attributed in William Percy’s (obscure poet of the 17th century) closeted manuscripts. The reference to Freud above is intended to imply the ubiquity of this pattern of behavior and its persistence from age to age; humankind is steeped in concupiscence. Percy’s drama is a paean to joy and jouissance, a celebration of what it is to be alive./ The drama itself tells of the peregrinations and loves and fates of a dozen players. Prominent among them are two spouse swapping couples: Doucebella and Claribel, and Aruania and Floridan who couple in various permutations, including a Lesbian encounter. The drama is replete with absurd miscreants: thieves who steal from a doctor, a masculine but desirable gamekeeper and her husband, an innkeeper and two deadbeat customers. The reader will enjoy many hours dis-entangling this menage./ In the language of Percy’s drama, the reader will hear tones and rhythms and phrases suggestive of Shakespeare—and no wonder: Faktorovich establishes Percy as a ghost writer for Shakespeare. For example, a witch in Macbeth says, ‘By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.’/ And in Percy’s drama (p105), ‘Beset the pricking enclosure of my conscience…’ Cuckolds would be a great read if it were only for the fun of detecting such similarities. I commend it to you.” —Midwest Book Review, Lloyd Jacobs (December 2021)