Reputation
The central theme of The Roaring Girl surrounds Moll Cutpurse and her reputation as a morally loose, thieving, disreputable woman. However, the events of the play continue to raise the question of whether she is deserving of this reputation in the first place - while she may be a clever pickpocket, she is also fervently chaste and punishing toward men who would expect otherwise. Paradoxically, it is Moll's cross-dressing that leads certain characters (like Laxton) to perceive her as promiscuous, even though Moll's male clothing is decidedly more conservative than what she would typically don as a seventeenth-century woman. The play is therefore interested in the notion of appearances and how they reflect, distort, or challenge reality.
Gender
Of course, a significant theme in the play is gender. It is, after all, a play about a cross-dressing woman surrounded by a number of opportunistic men. While The Roaring Girl is not entirely forgiving of Moll's criminal behavior, it does portray her as markedly more clever and socially adept than the male characters of the play. Indeed, numerous male characters attempt to deceive and benefit from their own schemes, only to watch their plans unravel before their eyes. Moll, by contrast, is successfully cunning – and quietly so, as few men expect to be outwitted by a woman. This gender dynamic is further complicated by the fact that, at the time, all female roles on stage would have been portrayed by young male or boy actors in drag.
Deceit
The central plot of the play revolves around the notion of deceit and trickery, but this theme also appears peripherally with regard to Moll and characters' perceptions of her. Sebastian attempts to deceive his father by convincing him that he wishes to marry Moll (thereby making Mary a more palatable option for Sir Alexander), a scheme that sets the rest of the events in motion until Moll herself joins in. Furthermore, many perceive Moll's cross-dressing as a form of deception, as they connect her appearance to sexual promiscuity and are angry to discover that she abides by the same high standards of English noblewomen (that is, chastity until marriage). In this way, the play revolves around deception plots at the same time it interrogates assumptions about what it means to deceive.
Folly
The Roaring Girl is a comedy, which in the early modern period usually denoted a play that both ended happily and involved a number of intersecting plots that were usually based on wild misunderstandings among characters. This play is no exception, as it highlights the foolish nature of the majority of the male characters it includes. For example, Sir Alexander's folly is initially his refusal to acknowledge his son's choice of a wife; later, he himself recognizes his foolishness in drawing conclusions about people based solely on public opinion. Numerous other characters (notably, Laxton and Sir Davy Dapper) are also humiliated over the course of the play for the assumptions they make about others. In this way, the play provides entertainment for the audience while also emphasizing the foolishness inherent to making assumptions and participating in gossip.
Women's Independence
Moll Cutpurse is a symbol of female independence and autonomy at a time when women were not encouraged to pursue lives of their own but were instead expected to marry, have children, and rely on their husbands for support. At the end of the play, Moll asserts that she will never marry, which many interpret as a nod to the late Queen Elizabeth I, also known as the Virgin Queen, who died in 1603. However, while it is easy to label The Roaring Girl a proto-feminist play (the term "feminist" did not exist yet), one must be careful not to overstate its celebration of female independence. In many ways, Moll's autonomy becomes the butt of the joke among male characters, similar to Shakespeare's portrayal of Kate in The Taming of the Shrew. While Moll is the clear protagonist of The Roaring Girl, the play remains relatively ambiguous about its stance on women's rights.
Morality
Throughout the play, characters have competing notions of what justice and moral rectitude mean. Moll, for example, is involved in the criminality of London but explains in Act Five that her proximity to London's criminals makes her morally responsible to protect the righteous from their schemes. In many ways, Moll can be considered a "Robin Hood" type of character, whose behavior is technically criminal but who deploys that criminality for the betterment of those who are most deserving. Whether audiences are to truly celebrate Moll's "service" to her community or whether the play humorously crafts a hero out of a criminal is one of The Roaring GIrl's greatest ambiguities.
Social Class
Many consider The Roaring Girl a city comedy, meaning it serves as a realistic portrayal of average, working-class people in urban areas (usually London). Readers will note that a number of characters in the play are not part of the nobility but are instead day laborers working at ordinary jobs like sewing, selling, and managing shops. Others are not laborers at all but are instead part of London's network of thieves, pickpockets, and other unsavory characters. In dramatizing the lives of these social classes (often left out of early modern comedy, and certainly excluded from early modern tragedies and history plays), city comedy strives to reflect the composition of the audiences who were coming to watch the plays in the first place.