"KIX"

Like many Renaissance playwrights, Middleton chose character names that told the audience something about their personalities or their situations. This was borne of a tradition held over from the medieval morality plays, plays with characters like Vice and Everyman, representatives to convey a message to the audience, often religious or moralistic. Sir Oliver and Lady Kix fit well into this tradition. They are the barren couple of the play, and we know this before they even begin to bicker about their fate: "Kix = dry, hollow plant stem, figuratively a sapless person."1 Sir Oliver is himself a kix, it would seem; dry, hollow, sapless - unable to produce children, and more importantly for the play, an heir.

 

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