1. Historical Facts, as far I can remember them:

Therefore, it is my assumption that any woman who found herself in this predicament would be desperate to marry before the birth of the child so that her disgrace could at least be mollified (no pun intended) by the fact that the child would not be born a bastard.

It is also a fact that a pregnant woman of the peasant class would not have "maternity" clothes per se. She would have to make do with loosening the laces of her existing garments, or wear her chemises and cover up as best she could.

2. Some thoughts about my portrayal of this character:

Oh, boy! Where to begin...I suppose the beginning is as good a place as any, so I'll start with a maternity body suit I had made for my portrayal of Queen Katherine of Aragon. The year was 1994 and a group I acted with was recreating the Battle of Flodden Field as the plot for a "Living Chessgame". The historical Katherine had been pregnant during this campaign, and rode out with the troops to defend England from the invading Scots. Sadly, Kathy won the battle, but lost the child.

So, figuring that I probably would not play Katherine pregnant again, I had to come up with something to do with the body suit. Making it had been too much work to just let it hang in a closet. The inspiration for Molly was born out of the desire to re-use that body suit and, to be frank, feeling like I needed to prove myself.**

I wanted to create a character that was funny, engaging, had an "objective" that she needed to achieve from patrons, and was memorable. Most importantly, I needed a way to visually "mark" all the people I interacted with during the festival day.

I pulled out the "baby names" book that I use to create character names, and found that Molly is a variation of Mary. The thought process then went something like "Mary...Virgin Mary...pregnant, oh: Molly!...but Molly-what? Molly is pregnant & unwed, needs a husband desperately...what a mess...a mishap. EUREKA: Molly Mishap!!!"

So now I had a name (Molly Mishap) and an objective (get the male patrons to propose to me and marry me while being forbidden to ask them to "marry me", myself...get it?), but I still needed a way to "mark" them...I thought about little ribbons in their clothes, and all sorts of trinkets along those lines. THEN I had the biggest brain-wave of all: make Molly a "Pregnant Kissing Wench"! It's a natural consequence of the profession, and makes for an immediate visual joke.

The next step was to make a green chemise (another visual joke for those that get the reference...) pull out a red-ish peasant bodice I had (for passion), find a few more skirts to use as petticoats, and go buy the most obnoxious candy-apple red lipstick on the market.

I practiced puckering and making the best lip-prints I could manage. It's not as easy as it sounds, but being fortunate to possess full lips, I figured out how to do it. It's no exaggeration to say that my lip-prints are about the size of a 50-cent piece, and can be seen from quite a distance.

It's not unusual that by 1 or 2 in the afternoon at a festival where Molly has been invited, most of the male patrons carry telltale signs of an encounter with Molly. Well, at least until October 2002 when Molly encountered a virus that almost done her in.

Quite literally a few days after my last gig of the season, I got sick with a cold. The cold turned out to be "community acquired double-pneumonia". I was hospitalized and diagnosed with "Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome". (Remember "ARDS"? That started making headlines a few months after my illness.) What I had was similar only it wasn't as virulent, meaning I didn't become "Typhoid Molly" and contaminate everyone. My virus appears to have been an "old" bug in so far as it wasn't as easy to catch (though it was as lethal) as the new "ARDS" virus. I almost died during that adventure.

Anyway, I'm telling you this story to explain a modification I've had to make to my performance of Molly, in case you're wanting to hire me for your festival. After three weeks in a medically induced coma and being connected to various ventilators to breathe for me, months of rehab, and a year of catching every bug that looked my way, my doctors don't want me kissing anyone. (Except my sweetheart, of course, and he's had his shots.)

So, I have "muzzled" Molly. I experimented with a few ways of playing her at faire, including carrying a sign stating that the King or Queen has declared Molly a public nuisance and forbidden her to kiss anyone, but it isn't the same. I am in the process of constructing a human muzzle for her, which I think will add to the visual comedy and also conjure up images of medieval punishments. Molly, after all, has been a bad girl...

To conclude this section (because I could go on and on about all the little street bits that Molly has, but it's 10 years' worth and I don't want to bore you) I'd like to tell you two last things: Firstly, that I play Molly very "clean". I don't like crudeness, so I keep that element out of my performances. Secondly, Molly spans the ages. I've played Medieval Molly, Tudor Molly, Viking Molly, Elizabethan Molly and Restoration (Pirate) Molly. I could play Jacobean Molly and Commonwealth Molly, though the last one might scare me a bit. The point is, you've got a festival; I've got a great character. Let's talk and have me perform at your show! You'll be glad you did.

*Molly collects husbands with last names that start with the letter "M"...the exception was "Levy" who became so distraught upon hearing that Molly would not carry his name that he almost cried. So Molly, kind soul that she is, said she'd add his name but she'd have to "Levy" him at the end. He didn't get the joke, but Molly kept his name, in the end.

**I had felt "dissed" by someone who assumed I had little acting skill or experience. I was offered "theatrical training in lieu of financial compensation" (exact words) when I attempted to negotiate a contract to act at a festival for which this person was ED. To make a long and in the end, satisfying, story short, they got someone else to play the part for free, got what they paid for, and hired me to play the part the next year. So you see, in the words of the Dalai Lama "sometimes not getting what you wanted is an incredible stroke of luck". If I hadn't felt insulted, I might never have come up with the idea for Molly. And since the festival changed themes the year after I got hired, I would've been out of a job anyway. Molly Mishap, on the other hand, has been going strong since 1995.

3. Forget the intellectual gibberish! Show me the pictures!