“None but Myself Shall Play the Changeling”: Fairies, Fortune-Tellers, and Female Autonomy in The Spanish Gypsy

This essay explores the overlap between many standard features of the gypsy stereotype in early modern England and early modern beliefs about fairies. Ultimately, this feminist reading of these intersecting early modern dramatic narratives concludes that the “folly” characteristic of fairy and gypsy narratives is, quite often, empowering for the women whose lives it touches: in The Spanish Gypsy, the gypsy patriarch’s response to Constanza’s headstrong assertion “None but myself shall play the changeling” is “Do what thou wilt” (2.1.124–25).