Mary Frith (1584?–1659) was better known by her underworld nickname: Moll Cutpurse. Although closely associated with her notoriety as a female offender, the sobriquet inadequately conveys the full range of her eccentric attitudes and illegal practices. Frith was accused and, at times, convicted of thieving, but also of receiving stolen goods, prostitution and procuring, drinking and swearing, cross-dressing and performing – at least as a musician – on a stage then forbidden to actresses. In Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton, Swapan Chakravorty observes that Moll Cutpurse was also considered as guilty of ‘deviant mirth’ – and masterlessness. It then comes as no surprise that ‘Moll and her crew [were] associated with every slander brought against players – theft, prostitution, sodomy, vagrancy, levity, shape-shifting, cross-dressing’.