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Thomas Middleton was the son of a London master
bricklayer. He was educated first at Queen's College,Oxford, and was
then admitted at Gray's Inn in 1593. He published three volumes of
verse by 1600, and it is believed that he had already begun to write
for the stage at that time. Certainly he was a working playwright by
1602, when he is mentioned in Henslowe's Diary, and his earliest surviving
independent play, Blurt,
Master Constable (1602) was printed.
Middleton was an industrious,
prolific writer, writing for both Boys of St. Paul's and the Admiral's
Men. His citizen
comedies, written for boys'
companies between 1602 and 1607, include A Mad World, My Masters
(c.1605), A Trick
to Catch the Old One (c.1605) and Michaelmas Term
(c.1606). He collaborated with Dekker on the
comedies The
Honest Whore
[Part I] (1604), The Family of Love
(1603-1607), and The
Roaring Girl (1610). For the adult companies, he also
wrote his masterpiece, A Chaste Maid in
Cheapside (1611). These comedies expose bourgeois vice in
contemporary London in a satiric tone.
From 1613 on, Middleton wrote many
City of London pageants for the Lord Mayor, and served as City
Chronologer from 1620 until his death in 1627. Yet, he continued to
write plays as well; three collaborations with Rowley are worth
mention: A Fair
Quarrel (pub.1617), The World Tossed at Tennis
(pub.1620) and the superb tragicomedy The Changeling
(1622).
Middleton's patriotic drama, A
Game at Chess, (1624), unprecedentedly successful, was closed
after nine performances due to its inflammatory anti-Spanish content
and the Spanish Ambassador's outrage. The writer and the actors were
reprimanded and fined. One of Middleton's last plays, Women Beware
Women (c.1625), was a tragedy where the final “slaughter”
scene verged on comedy, a matter which has persuaded some critics that
Middleton was also the author of The Revenger's
Tragedy (1607). Middleton died of natural causes
at Newington Butts and was buried there on July 4, 1627.
Works and Criticism:
Asp, C. A Study of Thomas Middleton's Tragicomedies (1974)
Bullen, A. H. Works
of Thomas Middleton (8 vol., 1885–86)
Camoin, François André. The Revenge Convention in
Tourneur, Webster, and Middleton (1972)
Heinemann, Margot. Puritanism and Theatre : Thomas Middleton and
Opposition Drama
Under the Early Stuarts (1980)
Howard-Hill, T.H. Middleton's
'Vulgar Pasquin' : Essays on A Game at Chess (1995)
Kistner, A. L Middleton's
Tragic Themes (1984)
Mulryne, J. R. Thomas Middleton (1979)
Steen, Susan Jayne. Ambrosia
in an Earthern Vessel : Three Centuries of Audience and Reader
Response
to the Works of Thomas Middleton (1993)
White, Martin. Middleton
and Tourneur (1992)
Middleton | Works | Links | Essays
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