Collegiality and City entertainments in Epicoene

1) The collegiates and Mistress Otter function as a sort of silly female chorus in the play. They offer up empty opinions, bicker about who should be considered fashionable, and provide questionable advice to Epicoene on marriage. Their "wit " and advice seem crude against the gallants' sharper tongues. Movng beyond an obvious gender bias, can we draw some conclusions that might explain this behavior? What does it mean that they live away from their husbands? What do you think Jonson is revealing about the threat - or ineffectiveness- of women in numbers?

2) I'm interested in Truewit's observations on the profusity of women in public and how beneficial studying them can be in public. In IV.i54-6, he mentions court, tiltings, feast, plays and church as spaces or events he goes to observe women and become "proficient" at decoding them, but also at picking them up "to love... to play with...to touch... or to hold over." These public spaces, then, seem to act as a sort of shopping market where men can choose females and accompanying services just as he would choose a wig or other commodity. Keeping in mind the prostitutes - or purchasable women - we encountered last week, what does Truewit's speech about the public availability indicate about what can be bought and sold? Are the women in Epicoene commodified in the same way as the plays we read last week? What bearing does public space and entertainments have on the seeming commercial availability of women, at least in the eyes of the gallants of the play?