Summary
Moll and Jack discuss his narrow escape from the sergeants, and Jack assures Moll that prison would not have improved him one bit. He argues that prison only makes people worse, and thanks her for saving him.
Moll has discharged Trapdoor as her servant after becoming suspicious of his motives. He appears dressed as a soldier, but Moll knows it is merely a disguise.
Suddenly, a group of cutpurses enter and attempt to rob Moll and her companions, but she scares them away. She tells Jack that it is her duty to protect honorable people from becoming victims of low-life criminals, about whom she has intimate knowledge.
Sir Alexander hears that Sebastian and Moll have run away to get married. Mary's father, Sir Guy, mocks Sir Alexander and wages all of his land that Moll and Sebastian will not actually get married. Sir Alexander takes the bet, saying that anybody but Moll would be welcome in his home as his daughter-in-law.
The servant announces the arrival of Sebastian and his bride. When Sebastian enters holding Moll's hands, Sir Alexander is furious but nonetheless demands his winnings from Sir Guy. Then, Mary enters as Sebastian's actual bride. Sir Alexander apologizes to Mary and Sir Guy and offers half his own land to his son and new daughter-in-law.
When Moll is asked when she will marry, she repeats that she never will.
Trapdoor arrives and confesses that he was employed by Sir Alexander as a spy. Sir Alexander vows that he will never again judge someone based on reputation alone.
Analysis
Moll's interaction with Jack Dapper in the first half of Act V helps provide audiences with some clarity about her character.
Until this point, viewers have been presented with both Moll's reputation as a cross-dressing, morally loose pickpocket and the reality of Moll's chaste and righteous character. Audiences might therefore wonder whether Moll has any association with criminality at all, or the extent to which any part of her reputation is true.
When the cutpurses arrives to steal from Moll and Jack, Moll is easily able to scare them off, as she is known and feared by all of London's rogues. She then explains to Jack that she believes it is her duty to protect innocent people from these crimes precisely because of her proximity to London's criminal world. Thus, the play concludes with a portrait of Moll as someone who uses her first-hand knowledge of criminality for the benefit of society, ultimately showing that, though she may have criminal experience herself, she has still maintained her moral rectitude. Thus, the play suggests that people like Moll are necessary players in society as a whole, and that it is possible to be adjacent to unsavory experience without taking on those qualities for oneself.
In the final scene of the play, order is restored as Sir Alexander realizes that Sebastian has married Mary and not Moll: the rightful couple ends up together, Sir Guy and Sir Alexander make amends, Sir Alexander welcomes Mary as his daughter-in-law, and Moll's reputation is restored by her willingness to help Sebastian and Mary in their plot.
Like most early modern comedies, The Roaring Girl therefore features a "happy ending," but it is a unique happy ending in that Moll, the titular character, not only remains unmarried but once again announces her intentions to never marry. Whereas most early modern comedies feature marriages of any and all eligible young characters, The Roaring Girl concludes with a portrait of a woman, still dressed in men's clothing, content to avoid marriage altogether. This is one of the reasons why some scholars defend the play as inherently feminist, as its main character never sacrifices her autonomy and still ends up as fulfilled, if not more fulfilled, than the other characters in the play.
