Ravenscroft’s play is another short afterpiece, being a mere two acts long. The plot, based on Crispin Médecin is easily summarised as well: Old Gerald and his son, Young Gerald, both love Angelina, the daughter of Monsieur le Médecin, a French doctor and anatomist. Young Gerald is aided by his servant Crispin, Old Gerald by the servant Martin, and Angelina by her maid Beatrice. In the first act, Old Gerald’s attempts at a quick marriage to Angelina are frustrated by Monsieur le Médecin’s wife, who will not have her daughter married to someone so elderly. Meanwhile, Crispin sneaks into the doctor’s home with a message for Angelina. Before he can deliver it, the doctor returns and Crispin has to pretend first to be a corpse to avoid detection (but is nearly dissected instead) and then to be a doctor himself (and is very nearly exposed when his response to every ailment is to give the patient “pills”).

The second act is almost a mirror to the first, with the concluding scene consisting of Old Gerald sneaking in to the doctor’s laboratory in an attempt to meet Angelina. Yet their tête-à-tête is interrupted by the arrival of Young Gerald (dressed as a servant) and Crispin (dressed as a doctor). Looking for somewhere to hide, Old Gerald pretends to be a corpse awaiting dissection. However, when Crispin threatens to begin cutting him open, Old Gerald panics, and rushes from the room…straight into the arms of the doctor and his wife. Thoroughly shamed, Old Gerald then learns that whilst he has been lying very still, his son has married Angelina nearby. On that bombshell, and with the doctor’s advice that “ve vill ave bon soupé et be ver merry tous ensemble”, the play ends.

Like the other afterpieces I’ve read, this one is raucous, unsophisticated and farcical. There are jokes about adultery: the doctor tells Beatrice that he wants “a little touch at your tettons”, fails, leaves, and then Beatrice points out that what’s “sauce for the goose shall be sauce for the gander” – i.e. that women will enjoy adulterous practices as much as men. There are jokes about the French, all incarnated in the person and the speech of the doctor. And there are the best jokes, which are really comic situations, such as the moment Crispin is almost dissected, an experience that marks him so deeply that when he comes to pick a fight at the end of the play, he threatens, “I would dissect you rascal; run my fist through your systole and diastole.” It’s lines like this that make this play stand out for me, and make Crispin its most interesting character. Curiously, I’ve already come across the name in acting manuals, where he is categorised as a character with no foundation in nature. To be honest, this is probably with reference to the many other Crispin plays, as the servant’s concern for avoiding dissection seems very natural to me here.