‘Of counsel with [m]y mistress’: The mistress–servant alliance in Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling (1622)

Analyses of service in The Changeling have focused on De Flores as an embodiment contemporary fears about servants, neglecting his mistress's agency and the play's engagement with anxieties women's authority, especially their power over servants. They also ignore two other Diaphanta Lollio, whose relationships mistresses are equally revealing those anxieties. This article argues that stages alliances between servants threatening to patriarchal authority. It revises dominant critical reading play, showing while castle plot dissolves mistress–servant alliance, hospital is less straightforward.