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Act 3, Scene 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Rover, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gender Roles
Love vs. Lust
Deceit and Disguise
Class and Money
Wit and Language
Summary
Analysis
Later in the day, Blunt and Lucetta enter a room in her house. Lucetta tells the Englishman that they no longer have to worry about her (imaginary) old husband coming home, and can now focus solely on love. Blunt laments that he has no fine words with which to flatter her, but Lucetta reassures him of her love for him. Blunt resolves to kill her husband and marry her himself.
In another subplot, Lucetta’s swindling of Blunt continues, Having brought him to her house, she now means to seduce and rob him, Although this arc is meant to be comic, it also exemplifies the kind of scheming, manipulative, promiscuous woman whom the men of the play fear and hate. Yet, at the same time, isn’t there a similarity between Willmore, who seduced and took the money of Angelica, and what Lucetta is doing here? Lucetta’s actions are more purposeful—she plans to betray Blunt from the beginning—but Willmore’s betrayal of Angelica is just as predictable.
Themes
Lucetta excuses herself to go undress, and Blunt urges her to hurry. She exits, and Blunt begins to rejoice at his good fortune. Sancho enters, and tells Blunt to come into Lucetta’s chamber, leading him there with a candle.
Blunt has completely confused love and lust, that he is in love with Lucetta, whom he barely knows, when he in fact simply desires her. Lucetta encourages this confusion because it makes Blunt easy to manipulate.
Themes
The scene changes to Lucetta’s inner chamber, which contains a bed, a table, and an undressed Lucetta. Blunt takes the candle from Sancho, who exits. As Blunt undresses, he continues to swear his love; in only his shirt and drawers, he approaches the bed, but Lucetta urges him to put out the light, lest it betray their activity. Blunt asserts that the light from her eyes is enough for him. In the darkness, he attempts to find the bed, but fails—Lucetta has apparently given him the slip. As he grows increasingly agitated, a trap door opens, and he falls down into it.
Lucetta’s plot reaches its climax as Blunt, believing that he is about to sleep with Lucetta, leaves all of his valuables unprotected. His fall through the trapdoor is high physical comedy, and would have been appreciated by the audiences of the day. The darkness of Lucetta’s bedroom, meanwhile, represents Blunt’s blindness in the face of his lust for the deceptive prostitute.
Themes
Lucetta enters with Sancho, and Philippo, who is in love with her. They rejoice at their fine catch, and begin to count their substantial booty, including even Blunt’s sword and hat. They assert that they will not be caught, since Blunt does not know Lucetta’s name, the street address, or even the way back to his own home. Lucetta says that she should have given him at least one night of pleasure, but Philippo responds that he is too jealous, and urges her to go to bed with him; she agrees, and they exit, along with Sancho.
Because of his trust in Lucetta, Blunt will have no way of identifying her or catching her—not even her name. Once again the characters discuss love and lust in terms of money, as Lucetta wonders whether she should have slept with Blunt in exchange for the theft. But Philippo’s jealousy suggests either that he loves Lucetta, or that there is a double standard for men in which they view themselves as sexual free agents but the women with whom they have sex as needing to be monogamous.
Themes
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Blunt reenters, dirty and unclothed. He curses Lucetta, and indeed, all women, and laments his own foolishness. Remembering his friends, he realizes that he will face their merciless mockery tomorrow. He can find comfort only in the fact that he is not the first man to be so fooled by a woman.
Lucetta’s crime makes the slow and foolish Blunt leap to extremes, deciding that he hates all women, rather than the one who wronged him. He believes that they are all deceitful, and blames the entire gender for his own stupidity. Yet while Blunt is ridiculous and extreme, there nonetheless is a note of similarity between his ridiculous outlook about women here and the other men’s outlooks regarding women.
Themes
