A MAIDENHEAD WELL LOST, or
A MAYDEN–HEAD WELL LOST

circa 1625–1634

a synoptic, alphabetical character list

CLOWN
The Clown, the widow Sforsa's servant, agrees to accompany her and Lauretta from Millaine to Florence, and there offers to beg for their sustenance. He exchanges witticisms with the Prince and Mounsieur, and otherwise provides low-comic interludes.

DUKE of FLORENCE
The Duke of Florence accepts Ambassador Stroza's proposal from the Duke of Millaine that his son should marry Julia if the Prince will consent, witnesses the Prince's challenge of Julia's chastity and the revelations around the bed-trick, and agrees at the end that the young man should marry Lauretta.

DUKE of MILAN
Also spelled Duke of Millaine. When Sforsa's wife petitions the Duke to relieve her husband, whose siege of Naples on Millaine's behalf is going badly, he tells her that the fault is not with him but his officers, who have failed to fulfill his orders for money and supplies to be sent to the General, and promises the fault will be made good; it is not clear whether the assurance is honest or slippery. He assents reluctantly to his daughter's insistence that Lauretta be banished, and agrees to urge a quick marriage between Julia and Parma. When she tells him of her pregnancy, however, and urges him to kill her, he vainly tries to apprehend the Prince and to devise some way to rescue the family honor. After the baby is born and given to Stroza to dispose of, he proposes that Julia marry the Prince of Florence instead, and sends Stroza to negotiate. Coming to Florence for the wedding, he mendaciously supports Julia's denials of unchastity, and gives Stroza money which which to suborn Lauretta to undertake the bed-trick. When the Prince reveals the plot, however, he confesses his part, and is profoundly relieved when Parma reappears to make his daughter an honest woman, and happy to restore the Widow and Lauretta to places of honor in Millaine.

HUNTSMAN
A servant of the Prince of Florence, the Huntsman oversees the Prince's generous treatment of the Widow and Lauretta, and fences verbally with the Clown.

JEROM
A "ghost character," the Clown's fellow servant, charged by the Clown with slyly drinking all the latter's wine.

JULIA
Daughter and heir of the Duke of Millaine, she loves the Prince of Parma, to whom she has yielded her virginity, but is told by Stroza that the Prince is having an affair with Lauretta, the daughter of Sforsa. Encountering Lauretta, she strikes her, then charges the Prince with inconstancy, but when he responds by vowing to abjure her, instantly repents, realizing that unless she marries him her pregnancy will bring her to shame. She asks her father to banish Lauretta from court. She tells Parma about her condition, but hardened against her by Stroza, he scorns her. She then reveals the truth to her father. After the baby is born and sent away, she agrees to marry the Prince of Florence. When he charges her at the altar with being unchaste, she protests, and is eager to do her part in the bed-trick. She is duped in turn by the suspicious Prince, however, and when the plot is revealed and disgrace looms, she is glad to be saved by the reappearance of Parma and the baby, and the Duke of Millaine's approval of their marriage.

LAURETTA
Beautiful and modest, but calumniated by Stroza, the daughter of General Sforsa is banished from Millaine at Julia's behest just as she and her mother learn of her father's victory and death. While she and her mother are traveling in poverty to Florence, they encounter the Prince of Florence, who falls in love with her and installs them in a comfortable lodge. She loves him in return, and is made miserable by the news that he must wed Julia. She concurs in Stroza's plan to take Julia's place in the nuptial bed, which she leaves with lavish gifts from the Prince. When the Prince comes to her to share his joy at having found his bride still chaste, she uses the gifts to prove that it was she, not Julia, whose maidenhead he took. After the Prince reveals the plot, and the Duke of Millaine confirms that she is of honorable descent, she and the Prince are free to marry in law as well as in fact.

LORD of MILAN
Also spelled Lord of Millaine. This lord is Parma's friend, and tells the prince of Julia's betrothal to the Prince of Florence.

MOUNSIEUR
This courtier, tutor to the Prince of Florence, comments shrewdly on his master's love of Lauretta and other matters. Privy to the details of the bed-trick, he is so offended by Stroza's dissimulation that he challenges the malcontent to trial by combat, and by defeating him forces him to confess all his plots.

PRINCE of FLORENCE
While hunting in the forest, this nobleman encounters the Widow Sforsa and her daughter, and is so moved by their beauty and distress that he settles them in a comfortable lodge. He falls in love with the girl, and is tormented by the difference in their station. When his father approves of a match between him and Julia, he agrees to it as his princely duty. He declares the news to Lauretta, who faints. An anonymous letter (actually from the Prince of Parma) charges that Julia has been previously betrothed and deflowered, but when the Florentine makes the accusation public during the wedding, she, her father, and especially Stroza defend her so vehemently that he agrees to wed her, with the understanding that should he find the accusations true, he will attack and destroy Millaine to avenge the affront to his honor. Sforza and Lauretta play the bed-trick on him; still suspicious, however, he gives her a ring and a charter, which Lauretta subsequently points to as proof that it was she, not Julia, whose maidenhead he took. Returned to court, he challenges Julia to display the gifts. Stroza tries to rescue her, but cannot; Mounsieur charges Stroza with the plot, and challenges him to trial by combat. When Mounsieur wins, Stroza confesses all his schemes, and when Parma arrives with their child to confirm Julia's prior engagement, the Prince is free to marry Lauretta.

PRINCE of PARMA
The Prince of Parma loves Julia, and has made her pregnant before they could be married. Her false accusations of inconstancy rankle him, however; he spurns her, and then flees from the court of Millaine to avoid the Duke's wrath. Relenting, he skulks nearby until the child is born, and when Stroza abandons it, takes it to rear as his own. When he learns that Julia is to marry the Prince of Florence, he gives the other prince a letter stating that she is already betrothed and deflowered, and so prompts the Florentine's testing of his bride. On the morning after the wedding, Parma sends the child to the Prince of Florence, then appears himself and gives it to Julia to hold; a quibbling exchange brings the two princes to the verge of combat, but the full truth reconciles them, and Parma, Julia, and their child are joyfully reunited.

SFORSA
A "ghost character." We learn from the Soldier how this general of Millaine, at the point where their army was in dire straits for lack of money and supplies, led a victorious assault on the citadel at Naples, but discovering that his commission explicitly forbade him to take advantage of their victory by seizing and sharing booty with his unpaid soldiers, gave them his arms and equipment and then died of a broken heart.

SOLDIER
Thrusting past the dismissive Stroza to deliver his message, this soldier reports the great victory of the Millainese at Naples, but also the death of the broken-hearted General Sforsa.

STROZA
Stroza is secretary to the Duke of Millaine, a malcontent. Some time before the play begins, he was frustrated in his military ambitions by General Sforsa, and has resolved to take revenge by destroying the reputations of both the General and his daughter, Lauretta. He tells his employer's daughter, Julia, that her suitor, the Prince of Parma, is carrying on a secret affair with Lauretta, whom he impugns as lowborn and unchaste; then tells the Prince that should Julia tax him with infidelity, it is in order to break off their match. The strategem works; Parma breaks off the engagement and goes into hiding, and Julia cows her father into banishing Lauretta and her mother. After Julia's illegitimate baby is born, Stroza abandons it along a roadside. He negotiates her betrothal to the Prince of Florence, and when the Prince challenges her chastity during the marriage ceremony, strongly supports her protestations of innocence. The Prince's promise to assail Millaine should her unchastity be confirmed inspires a strategem: to substitute the virginal Lauretta in the bridal bed for the deflowered Julia. Lauretta agrees; but the Prince's gift of ring and charter allows her to prove the substitution to him and Mounsieur, and when Mounsieur challenges Stroza to combat and defeats him, the machiavel confesses all his plots. In the comic ending, however, he is allowed to live and thrive.

WIDOW
The unnamed wife of General Sforsa and mother of Lauretta, she petitions the Duke of Millaine to relieve the needs of her valiant husband and his army, but learns almost at once of her husband's victory, frustration, and death. Impoverished and disconsolate, she resolves to seek a retired life in Florence. En route, she and her daughter meet the Prince of Florence, who is moved by their beauty and distress to install them in a comfortable hunting lodge. She is horrified when her daughter tells Stroza that she will consent to take Julia's place in the marriage bed, but gladdened by their restitution to an honorable place at the court of Millaine and her daughter's union with the Prince of Florence.