She was scarce of age
when the town devoured in greedy admiration the first record of her
pranks and exploits. A year later Middleton made her the heroine of a
sparkling comedy. Thereafter she became the favourite of the rufflers,
the commonplace of the poets. Newgate knew her, and Fleet Street; her
manly figure was as familiar in the Bear Garden as at the Devil Tavern;
courted alike by the thief and his victim, for fifty years she lived
a life brilliant as sunlight, many-coloured as a rainbow. And she is
remembered, after the lapse of centuries, not only as the Queen-Regent
of Misrule, the benevolent tyrant of cly-filers and heavers, of hacks
and blades, but as the incomparable Roaring Girl, free of the playhouse,
who perchance presided with Ben Jonson over the Parliament of Wits.
She was born in the Barbican at the heyday of England's greatness, four
years after the glorious defeat of the Armada, and had to her father an
honest shoemaker. She came into the world (saith rumour) with her fist
doubled, and even in the cradle gave proof of a boyish, boisterous
disposition. Her girlhood, if the word be not an affront to her mannish
character, was as tempestuous as a wind-blown petticoat. A very 'tomrig
and rump-scuttle,' she knew only the sports of boys: her war-like spirit
counted no excuse too slight for a battle; and so valiant a lad was she
of her hands, so well skilled in cudgel-play, that none ever wrested
a victory from fighting Moll. While other girls were content to hem a
kerchief or mark a sampler, Moll would escape to the Bear Garden, and
there enjoy the sport of baiting, whose loyal patron she remained unto
the end.
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