Your Five Gallants

rdf:langString Your Five Gallants

rdf:langString Your Five Gallants is a Jacobean comedy by Thomas Middleton. It falls into the subgenre of city comedy. Allusions in the play point to a date of authorship of 1607. The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 22 March 1608. The quarto published by bookseller Richard Bonian is undated, but probably followed the registration by a small gap and appeared later in 1608. The title page states that the drama was acted by the Children of the Chapel, and assigns the authorship to "T. Middleton." The five "gallants" of the play's title are frauds, poseurs, and con men—a pickpocket, pimp, pawnbroker, cheat, and whoremonger—who compete with the protagonist, Fitzgrave, for the affections of Katherine, a wealthy orphan. (The five conspire to woo Katherine together; the one who wins her will help out the others.) Fitzgrave manipulates them into exposing their own crimes and vices through a masque. Fitzgrave marries Katherine, while the "gallants" marry the five prostitutes who are their shadows in the play. Between the two groups of ne'er-do-wells, Middleton provides a vigorous satire on the manners and mores of London society of the day.