Crutches and Cripistemology in The Fair Maid of the Exchange

The Cripple, the central character of the anonymous 1607 city comedy The Fair Maid of the Exchange, describes the onset of his dis-ability as “the visitation of my legges, and my expence in timber.”1 His statement frames this experience in both enlivened and economic terms. “Visitation,” defined as affliction with illness or trouble, was usually accompanied by the subject performing that action, for instance, “the visitation of the Lord” or “the visitation of death.”2 In this case, how-ever, his phrase suggests that the legs themselves enacted the visitation. “Expence in timber” describes his adoption of crutches as an investment in the high-stakes early modern timber market.3 The Cripple’s merging of agential objects and commercial objects exemplifies a union that occurs throughout the play. In exploring the liveliness of things in the commer-cial environment of the play, I suggest that this text carefully attends to their vitality, while the play’s characters are primarily attentive only to their financial power. The exception is the Cripple, who seems occa-sionally capable of seeing both their value and vitality. Considering how and why he possesses such a capability illuminates the ethical limits and potential of object-oriented theory, specifically as it relates to prosthesis and disability.