Thomas Middleton
born , April? 1580, London, Eng.
died July 4, 1627, Newington Butts, Surrey
late-Elizabethan dramatist who drew people as he
saw them, with comic gusto or searching irony.
By 1600 Middleton had spent two years at
Oxford and had published three books of verse.
He learned to write plays by collaborating with
Thomas Dekker, John Webster, and others for the
producer Philip Henslowe.
A popular playwright, he was often
commissioned to write and produce lord mayor’s
pageants and other civic entertainments, and in
1620 he was appointed city chronologer. His
chief stage success was A Game at Chess (1625),
in which the Black King and his men,
representing Spain and the Jesuits, are
checkmated by the White Knight, Prince Charles.
This political satire drew crowds to the Globe
Theatre until the Spanish ambassador protested
and James I suppressed the play.
Middleton’s masterpieces are two tragedies,
Women Beware Women (1621?, published 1657) and
The Changeling (1622, with William Rowley;
published 1653). His comedies picture a society
dazzled by money in which most people grasp for
all they can get, by any means. Michaelmas Term
(1605?, published 1607) is one of the richest in
irony. In A Trick to Catch the Old One (1606?,
published 1608) two rival usurers are so eager
to score over each other that both are taken in
by a clever nephew. A Trick was entered for
licensing with an unattributed play entitled The
Revenger’s Tragedy (1607). Modern scholarship
attributes the latter to Middleton, although
Cyril Tourneur is sometimes given as the author.
In A Mad World, My Masters (1604?, published
1608) an old country gentleman prides himself on
his generosity to all except his grandson and
heir.
The Roaring Girl (1604–10?, with Dekker;
published 1611) depicts events in the life of
the notorious criminal Moll Frith (Moll
Cutpurse), who dressed as a man and preferred
her freedom to marriage. A Chaste Maid in
Cheapside (1613?, published 1630) is an
exuberant comedy that makes fun of naive or
complacent London citizens.
Middleton’s tragicomedies are farfetched in
plot but strong in dramatic situations. A Fair
Quarrel (1616?, with Rowley, published 1617)
contains one of Middleton’s few heroes, Captain
Ager, with his conflicts of conscience. Most of
Middleton’s other plays are comedies. He
collaborated with Dekker in The Honest Whore
(1604), and with Rowley and Philip Massinger in
The Old Law (1618?, published 1656). In 2007 all
the works attributed to Middleton were published
together, for the first time, as Thomas
Middleton: The Collected Works (eds. Gary Taylor
and John Lavagnino).
