The Devil Is An Ass Play

The Night I Learned the Devil Doesn't Always Wear Horns

I first heard The Devil Is an Ass* mentioned in a cramped university tutorial, half-listening while wondering whether the coffee I’d drunk an hour ago was going to keep me awake. The play’s full title — The Devil Is an Ass — Done* — landed like a dare. Even now, decades later, the phrase sticks in my head not because it’s particularly profound, but because it sounds exactly like the kind of thing someone would mutter after a long week and a few pints. That’s the thing about Middleton’s problem play: it doesn’t announce itself as a masterpiece. It slips in quietly, rearranges your assumptions, and leaves you questioning who’s really pulling the strings.

What Is The Devil Is an Ass*?

At its core, The Devil Is an Ass* is a city comedy written by Thomas Middleton around 1606, though it wasn’t published until 1607. In practice, unlike the more famous satirical works of his contemporaries, this play doesn’t rely on witty wordplay or elaborate disguises alone. Instead, it follows a devil named Asmodeus — yes, the same one from the biblical Book of Tobit — who gets sent to Earth to torment a corrupt lawyer named Fabian Fitz-Regal. The catch? Asmodeus has to do it while disguised as a human, and he’s not exactly subtle about his methods.

Middleton didn’t write this play in a vacuum. He was part of a generation of dramatists who were beginning to question the neat moral boundaries that earlier Elizabethan drama had taken for granted. Where Shakespeare’s villains often had clear motivations — revenge, ambition, jealousy — Middleton’s creations are more tangled. Asmodeus isn’t evil for evil’s sake; he’s bored, petty, and oddly sympathetic. He’s also deeply interested in the mechanics of human self-deception.

The play’s structure is deliberately messy. Some scenes feel like they belong to different genres entirely. Still, that’s intentional. So it shifts tone constantly — from bawdy humor to philosophical musings to moments of genuine pathos. Middleton wanted to mirror the chaos of London life, where a single street corner might host a preacher, a thief, and a prostitute within minutes of each other.

Why It Matters: The Mirror Middleton Held Up

Most people encounter The Devil Is an Ass* through academic circles, tucked away in footnotes or seminar discussions. But here’s why it deserves better: it’s one of the earliest English plays to treat hypocrisy as a systemic problem rather than an individual failing. In the 17th century, audiences were already familiar with the idea that people could be morally compromised. What made Middleton different was his insistence that corruption wasn’t just personal — it was institutional.

Fabian Fitz-Regal represents everything wrong with the legal profession of his time. He’s not a cartoon villain; he’s a man who genuinely believes he’s serving justice while systematically exploiting everyone around him. His downfall isn’t caused by divine intervention or poetic justice. It’s orchestrated by a devil who simply points out the inconsistencies in his behavior. In real terms, there’s no grand revelation scene, no dramatic confession. Just a slow dawning that the man has been living inside his own lies for so long, he’s forgotten what the truth looks like.

This resonates because we still live in a world where institutions often reward performance over integrity. Politicians who claim to fight corruption while lining their own pockets. Consider this: corporations that preach sustainability while trashing the environment. The play doesn’t offer solutions — Middleton wasn’t interested in easy answers — but it does something more valuable: it makes you uncomfortable with your own complicity.

How It Works: The Mechanics of Moral Chaos

The Devil’s Disguise

Asmodeus isn’t your typical stage devil. Instead, he appears as a series of personas — sometimes a servant, sometimes a gentleman, sometimes just a voice in the crowd. He doesn’t arrive with thunder and brimstone. This fluidity reflects how evil often operates in real life: not as a monstrous figure lurking in shadows, but as someone who fits without friction into social structures.

Middleton uses this disguise to explore the gap between appearance and reality. Every character in the play is performing some version of themselves. Even the “good” people are playing roles, adapting their behavior to fit expectations. Asmodeus simply takes this further — he becomes whoever he needs to be to expose the cracks in each person’s facade.

The Lawyer’s Downfall

Fitz-Regal’s arc is methodical. Middleton doesn’t rush the punishment. Think about it: instead, he builds it slowly, layer by layer. First, Asmodeus introduces small complications — a missing document here, a misunderstood instruction there. Which means then the mistakes compound. Fitz-Regal begins making decisions based on incomplete information, which leads to more errors. By the time he realizes what’s happening, his reputation is in tatters and his wealth is gone.

This isn’t just dramatic irony — it’s psychological realism. They erode gradually, making concessions and rationalizations until the point where they can no longer distinguish between right and wrong. Most people don’t collapse overnight. Fitz-Regal’s tragedy is that he never sees it coming because he’s too busy congratulating himself on his own cleverness.

The City as Character

London itself functions as a character in the play. The city doesn’t judge — it simply absorbs. Middleton populates the streets with beggars, merchants, prostitutes, and clergy, all jostling for space in a system that rewards the ruthless. Characters come and go, their fates determined by forces larger than themselves.

This urban landscape was revolutionary for its time. Earlier dramas tended to focus on isolated settings — a castle, a forest, a battlefield. Middleton’s London is crowded, noisy, and morally ambiguous. Everyone is connected, but nobody is truly accountable.

Common Mistakes: What Most People Get Wrong

Treating It as Pure Satire

Many readers approach The Devil Is an Ass* expecting straightforward comedy. They want punchlines, clear villains, and satisfying comeuppances. In real terms, it’s funny, yes, but it’s also unsettling. But Middleton isn’t interested in giving audiences what they expect. The play resists easy categorization. It asks uncomfortable questions without providing comfortable answers.

Want to learn more? We recommend the last lesson very short question answers and drag the right word to its definition for further reading.

This misunderstanding leads people to dismiss the play as merely clever or cynical. They miss the genuine empathy Middleton shows toward characters who are trapped by circumstances beyond their control. Even Fitz-Regal, for all his flaws, evokes something close to pity by the final act.

Underestimating the Religious Subtext

Asmodeus isn’t just a plot device — he’s a theological argument. In real terms, in the original biblical story, he’s a demon who tries to prevent Tobias from marrying Sarah. Middleton reimagines him as an agent of divine justice, albeit one with questionable methods. The play raises questions about whether evil can serve good ends, and whether the intention behind an action matters more than its consequences.

Some critics have read this as pure blasphemy. Others see it as a sophisticated exploration of moral complexity. Either way, ignoring the religious dimension flattens the entire work.

Assuming Middleton Was Alone

Thomas Dekker gets credit for many of the city comedies written during this period, but Middleton was equally innovative. He collaborated with other playwrights, adapted existing works, and experimented with form in ways that influenced later dramatists. Reducing him to a footnote in literary history does a disservice to his legacy.

Practical Tips: Making the Play Work Today

Read It Slowly

Unlike modern novels, early modern drama assumes you’ll experience it collectively. This leads to reading The Devil Is an Ass* silently, alone, can feel disjointed. Try reading aloud, or better yet, find a recording of a performance. The rhythm of the language becomes clearer when spoken, and the shifts in tone make more sense when you can hear them.

Pay Attention to the Minor Characters

Fitz-Regal dominates the narrative, but the play’s real insights come from secondary figures — the beggar who outwits the con men, the prostitute who shows unexpected loyalty, the clerk who refuses to bend the rules. Think about it: these characters represent alternative models of survival in a corrupt world. They’re often more interesting than the main plot.

Context Matters

Understanding the social and political climate of early 17th-century London helps, but

Understanding the social and political climate of early‑17th‑century London helps, but it is only the first layer of interpretation. To truly engage with The Devil Is an Ass* today, readers and performers must also attend to its linguistic texture, its self‑conscious theatricality, and the ways it invites the audience to question their own judgments.

Listen to the Wordplay
Middleton’s prose is packed with puns, double entendres, and rapid shifts in register. When reading silently, many of these nuances slip past unnoticed. A useful exercise is to annotate the text with marginal notes that flag each pun or ironic turn, then read those annotations aloud. Hearing the wordplay reveals how Middleton uses humor not just to entertain but to destabilize moral certainties.

Stage the Ambiguity
If you are directing a production, lean into the play’s tonal instability rather than trying to smooth it out. Let the comic scenes linger just a beat too long before the underlying menace surfaces, and allow the more serious moments to bleed back into farce. Minimalist costumes that suggest contemporary dress can underscore the timelessness of the greed and deception on display, while occasional anachronistic props (a modern ledger, a smartphone‑style “receipt” for a bribe) can highlight the continuity between Jacobean corruption and today’s financial scandals.

Invite Audience Participation
The original city comedies relied on the shared experience of a heterogeneous crowd. Modern adaptations can recreate that dynamic by breaking the fourth wall at key moments — perhaps having Fitz‑Regal directly solicit the audience’s advice on his next con, or letting the beggar solicit spare change from the spectators. Such interventions remind viewers that they, too, are complicit in the economic systems the play critiques.

Connect to Contemporary Themes
Middleton’s interrogation of whether evil can serve good ends resonates with current debates about “necessary evils” in politics, corporate ethics, and even artificial intelligence. After a reading or performance, allow a discussion that asks: When, if ever, do we tolerate harmful means for a perceived greater good? How do the play’s minor characters — those who survive by wit rather than wealth — model alternative forms of agency in an unjust system?

Teach the Play as a Living Text
In the classroom, treat The Devil Is an Ass* as a case study in genre fluidity. Have students rewrite a scene in a different genre — noir, sitcom, or even a tweet‑storm — and then compare how the shift alters our perception of Fitz‑Regal’s culpability and Asmodeus’s role. This exercise highlights Middleton’s own experimentation with form and underscores why reducing him to a mere footnote does a disservice to his innovative spirit.

In sum, The Devil Is an Ass* resists the easy labels of satire, comedy, or moral allegory precisely because it refuses to let its audience settle into a single interpretive comfort zone. On the flip side, by attending to its linguistic play, embracing its tonal contradictions, staging it with an eye toward modern parallels, and inviting active engagement, we can uncover the genuine empathy and theological curiosity that Middleton weaves throughout the work. Also, far from being a cynical jab at Jacobean society, the play remains a vivid, unsettling mirror — one that continues to reflect our own struggles with justice, intention, and the uncomfortable ways in which vice and virtue can entwine. Embracing that complexity, rather than smoothing it over, is the best way to honor Middleton’s legacy and to let his devilishly clever comedy speak to audiences today.