ABSTRACT
The text of The Fair Maid of the Exchange begins with an unusual document: a doubling chart showing how “eleven actors may easily play” the comedy by taking on multiple roles. Some actors, such as the one playing Cripple, are assigned only one part; others have up to four. We know the doubling of parts was a practice in the early modern theater, though only two such printed charts are extant today. Unfortunately, Fair Maid’s doubling chart doesn’t quite work: on at least one occasion, characters supposed to be played by the same actor appear on stage at the same time. But the framing of this particular play by a doubling chart calls our attention to the ways it is structured, like many comedies, around pairings, parallels, likenesses, exchanges—and to the differences that may lie outside these linked patterns.
