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Thomas Middleton

This article is about the playwright. For other uses, seeThomas Middleton (disambiguation).

Thomas Middleton(baptised 18 April 1580 – July 1627; also speltMidleton) was an EnglishJacobean playwrightand poet. He, withJohn FletcherandBen Jonson,was among the most successful and prolific of playwrights at work in theJacobeanperiod, and among the few to gain equal success incomedyandtragedy.He was also a prolific writer ofmasquesandpageants.

Thomas Middleton, depicted in the frontispiece ofTwo New Plays,a 1657 edition ofWomen Beware WomenandMore Dissemblers Besides Women

Life

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Middleton was born in London and baptised on 18 April 1580. He was the son of a bricklayer, who had raised himself to the status of a gentleman and owned property adjoining theCurtain Theatrein Shoreditch. Middleton was five when his father died and his mother's subsequent remarriage dissolved into a 15-year battle over the inheritance of Thomas and his younger sister – an experience that informed him about the legal system and may have incited his repeated satire against the legal profession.

Middleton attendedThe Queen's College, Oxford,matriculating in 1598, but he did not graduate. Before he left Oxford sometime in 1600 or 1601,[1]he wrote and published three long poems in popular Elizabethan styles. None of them appears to have been especially successful, and one,Microcynicon: Six Snarling Satires,ran foul of anAnglican churchban on verse satire and was burned. Nevertheless, his literary career was launched.

In the early 17th century, Middleton made a living writing topical pamphlets, including one –Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets– that was reprinted several times and became the subject of a parliamentary inquiry. At the same time, records in the diary ofPhilip Hensloweshow that Middleton was writing for theAdmiral's Men.Unlike Shakespeare, Middleton remained a free agent, able to write for whichever company hired him. His early dramatic career was marked by controversy. His friendship withThomas Dekkerbrought him into conflict withBen JonsonandGeorge Chapmanin theWar of the Theatres.[citation needed]The grudge against Jonson continued as late as 1626, when Jonson's playThe Staple of Newsindulges in a slur on Middleton's great success,A Game at Chess.[2]It has been argued that Middleton'sInner Temple Masque(1619) sneers at Jonson (then absent inScotland) as a "silenced bricklayer".[3]

In 1603, Middleton married. In the same year an outbreak of theplagueforced the London theatres to close, whileJames Icame to the English throne. These events marked the beginning of Middleton's greatest period as a playwright. Having passed the time during the plague composing prose pamphlets (including a continuation ofThomas Nashe'sPierce Penniless), he returned to drama with great energy, producing almost a score of plays for several companies and in several genres, notablycity comedyandrevenge tragedy.He continued to collaborate with Dekker: the two producedThe Roaring Girl,a biography of the contemporary thiefMary Frith.

In the 1610s, Middleton began a fruitful collaboration with the actorWilliam Rowley,producingWit at Several WeaponsandA Fair Quarrel.Working alone in 1613, Middleton produced a comic masterpiece:A Chaste Maid in Cheapside.He also became increasingly involved with civic pageants, and in 1620 became officially appointed as chronologist to theCity of London,a post he held until his death in 1627, when it passed to Jonson.

Such official duties did not interrupt Middleton's dramatic writing; the 1620s saw the production of his and Rowley's tragedyThe Changeling,and of several tragicomedies. In 1624, he reached a peak of notoriety when his dramaticallegoryA Game at Chesswas staged by theKing's Men.The play used theconceitof a chess game to present and satirise the recent intrigues surrounding theSpanish Match.Though Middleton's approach was strongly patriotic, thePrivy Councilsilenced the play after nine performances, having received a complaint from the Spanish Ambassador. Middleton faced an unknown, probably frightening degree of punishment. Since no play later thanA Game at Chessis recorded, it has been suggested that the sentence included a ban on writing for the stage.

Death

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Middleton died at his home atNewington ButtsinSouthwarkin 1627, and was buried on 4 July in St Mary's churchyard.[4]The old church of St Mary's was demolished in 1876 for road-widening. Its replacement elsewhere in Kennington Park Road was destroyed in the Second World War, but rebuilt in 1958. The old churchyard where Middleton was buried survives as a public park inElephant and Castle.

Reputation

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Middleton's work has long been praised by literary critics, among themAlgernon Charles SwinburneandT. S. Eliot.The latter thought Middleton was second only to Shakespeare.[5]

Middleton's plays were staged throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, each decade offering more productions than the last. Even some less familiar works of his have been staged:A Fair Quarrelat theNational Theatre,andThe Old Lawby theRoyal Shakespeare Company.The Changelinghas been adapted for film several times. The tragedyWomen Beware Womenremains a stage favourite.The Revenger's Tragedywas adapted forAlex Cox's filmRevengers Tragedy,the opening credits of which attribute the play's authorship to Middleton.

Works

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Middleton wrote in many genres, includingtragedy,historyandcity comedy.His best-known plays are the tragediesThe Changeling(withWilliam Rowley) andWomen Beware Women,and the cynically satirical city comedyA Chaste Maid in Cheapside.Earlier editions ofThe Revenger's Tragedyattributed the play toCyril Tourneur,[6]or refused to arbitrate between Middleton and Tourneur.[7]However, since the statistical studies by David Lake[8]and MacDonald P. Jackson,[9]Middleton's authorship has not been seriously contested, and no further scholar has defended the Tourneur attribution.[10]The Oxford Middleton and its companion piece,Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture,offer extensive evidence both for Middleton's authorship ofThe Revenger's Tragedy,for his collaboration with Shakespeare onTimon of Athens,and for his adaptation and revision of Shakespeare'sMacbethandMeasure for Measure.It has also been argued that Middleton collaborated with Shakespeare onAll's Well That Ends Well.[11][12]However, these latter collaborative attributions are not universally accepted by scholars.

Middleton's work is diverse even by the standards of his age. He did not have the kind of official relationship with a particular company that Shakespeare or Fletcher had. Instead he appears to have written on afreelancebasis for any number of companies. His output ranges from the "snarling" satire ofMichaelmas Term(performed by theChildren of Paul's) to the bleak intrigues ofThe Revenger's Tragedy(performed by theKing's Men). His early work was informed by the flourishing of satire in the late Elizabethan period,[13]while his maturity was influenced by the ascendancy of Fletcheriantragicomedy.His later work, in which his satirical fury is tempered and broadened, includes three of his acknowledged masterpieces.A Chaste Maid in Cheapside,produced by theLady Elizabeth's Men,skilfully combines London life with an expansive view of the power of love to effect reconciliation.The Changeling,a late tragedy, returns Middleton to an Italianate setting like that ofThe Revenger's Tragedy,except that here the central characters are more fully drawn and more compelling as individuals.[14]Similar development can be seen inWomen Beware Women.[15]

Middleton's plays are marked by often amusingly presentedcynicismabout the human race. True heroes are a rarity: almost every character is selfish, greedy and self-absorbed.A Chaste Maid in Cheapsideoffers a panoramic view of a London populated entirely by sinners, in which no social rank goes unsatirised. In the tragediesWomen Beware WomenandThe Revenger's Tragedy,amoral Italian courtiers endlessly plot against each other, resulting in a climactic bloodbath. When Middleton does portray good people, the characters have small roles and are shown as flawless.

Due to a theological pamphlet attributed to him, Middleton is thought by some to have been a strong believer inCalvinism.

List of works

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Plays

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Attributed to Middleton, authorship disputed, possible co-authorship

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Other stage works

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  • The Whole Royal and Magnificent Entertainment Given to King James Through the City of London(1603–4) (co-written withThomas Dekker,Stephen Harrison andBen Jonson)
  • The Manner of his Lordship's Entertainment
  • Civitas Amor
  • The Triumphs of Truth(1613)
  • The Triumphs of Honour and Industry(1617)
  • The Masque of Heroes, or, The Inner Temple Masque(1619)
  • The Triumphs of Love and Antiquity(1619)
  • The World Tossed at Tennis(1620) (co-written withWilliam Rowley)
  • Honourable Entertainments(1620–1)
  • An Invention(1622)
  • The Sun in Aries(1621)
  • The Triumphs of Honour and Virtue(1622)
  • The Triumphs of Integrity with The Triumphs of the Golden Fleece(1623)
  • The Triumphs of Health and Prosperity(1626)

Poetry

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Prose

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  • The Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets(1601)
  • News from Gravesend(1603) (co-written withThomas Dekker)
  • The Nightingale and the Ant(1604) (also published asFather Hubbard's Tales)
  • The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinary(1604) (co-written with Dekker)
  • Plato's Cap Cast at the Year 1604(1604)
  • The Black Book(1604)
  • Sir Robert Sherley his Entertainment in Cracovia(1609) (translation).
  • The Two Gates of Salvation,orThe Marriage of the Old and New Testament(1609)
  • The Owl's Almanac(1618)
  • The Peacemaker(1618)

Notes

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  1. ^Mark Eccles, "Thomas Middleton a Poett",Studies in Philology54 (1957), p. 525.
  2. ^"News".Hollowaypages.
  3. ^Limon, Jerzey (1994). "A Silenc'st Bricklayer".Notes and Queries.41:512.doi:10.1093/nq/41-4-512.
  4. ^Thomas Middleton: the Final Decade. Accessed 1 February 2013Archived25 May 2013 at theWayback Machine
  5. ^"Thomas Middleton",The Times Literary Supplement,30 June 1927, pp. 445–446 (unsigned).
  6. ^Three Jacobean Tragedies(Penguin, 1968) and the Revels edition (Manchester UP, 1975) stated so on the cover, although the Revels editor makes a case for Middleton inside.
  7. ^TheNew MermaidsandRevels Student Editionleave open the question of authorship.
  8. ^The Canon of Middleton's Plays(Cambridge University Press, 1975).
  9. ^Middleton and Shakespeare: Studies in Attribution(1979).
  10. ^The play is attributed to Middleton in Jackson's facsimile edition of the 1607 quarto (1983), in Bryan Loughrey and Neil Taylor's edition ofFive Middleton Plays(Penguin, 1988), and inThomas Middleton: The Collected Works(Oxford, 2007). A summary of the evidence for Middleton's authorship is contained inThomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture,general editors Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Oxford, 2007).
  11. ^Laurie Maguire and Emma Smith: 'Many Hands – A New Shakespeare Collaboration?'TLS,19 April 2012. Online:Retrieved 26 April 2012Archived23 June 2015 at theWayback Machine.
  12. ^Coughlan, Sean (25 April 2012)."Shakespeare's 'co-author' named by Oxford scholars".BBC News.Retrieved30 November2014.
  13. ^Dorothy M. Farr,Thomas Middleton and the Drama of Realism,New York, Harper and Row, 1973, pp. 9–37.
  14. ^Farr, pp. 50–71.
  15. ^Farr, pp. 72–97.

References

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  • Anthony Covatta,Thomas Middleton's City Comedies.Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1973
  • Barbara Jo Baines,The Lust Motif in the Plays of Thomas Middleton.Salzburg, 1973
  • Eccles, Mark (1933). "Middleton's Birth and Education".Review of English Studies.7:431–41.
  • J. R. Mulryne,Thomas MiddletonISBN0-582-01266-X
  • Pier Paolo Frassinelli, "Realism, Desire, and Reification: Thomas Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside."Early Modern Literary Studies8 (2003)
  • Kenneth Friedenreich, ed.,"Accompaninge the players": Essays Celebrating Thomas Middleton, 1580–1980ISBN0-404-62278-X
  • Margot Heinemann.Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama Under the Early Stuarts.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980
  • Herbert Jack Heller.Penitent Brothellers: Grace, Sexuality, and Genre in Thomas Middleton's City Comedies.Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press, 2000
  • Ben Jonson.The Staple of News.London, 1692.Holloway e-text
  • Bryan Loughrey and Neil Taylor. "Introduction." In Thomas Middleton,Five Plays.Bryan Loughrey and Neil Taylor, eds. Penguin, 1988
  • Jane Milling and Peter Thomson, eds.The Cambridge History of British Theatre.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004
  • Mary Beth Rose.The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988
  • Schoenbaum, Samuel(1956). "Middleton's Tragicomedies".Modern Philology.54:7–19.doi:10.1086/389120.S2CID162087202.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne.The Age of Shakespeare.New York: Harpers, 1908.Gutenberg e-text
  • Ceri Sullivan, 'Thomas Middleton's View of Public Utility',Review of English Studies58 (2007), pp. 160–74
  • Ceri Sullivan,The Rhetoric of Credit. Merchants in Early Modern Writing(Madison/London: Associated University Press, 2002
  • Gary Taylor. "Thomas Middleton."Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004
  • Stanley Wells.Select Bibliographical Guides: English Drama, Excluding Shakespeare.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975
  • The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).Volume VI. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907–1921.Bartleby e-text
  • The Oxford Middleton ProjectArchived3 July 2019 at theWayback Machine
  • The Plays of Thomas Middleton
  • Bilingual editions (English/French) of two Middleton plays by Antoine Ertlé:(A Game at Chess)Archived3 October 2011 at theWayback Machine;(The Old Law)Archived3 October 2011 at theWayback Machine
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