The English playwright Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) was one of the most productive and talented playwrights of the Jacobean period. His best work was done in "city comedy"--comedy of intrigue with emp...
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For twenty years at the beginning of the seventeenth century only a handful of men rivaled Thomas Middleton as a writer for the English stage, and now only Shakespeare and Jonson are held his superior...
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In the following excerpt, the well-known ninteenth-century poet Swinburne surveys Middleton's dramatic works in an effort to establish him as a central Renaissance playwright.
If it be true,...
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In the following excerpt, Helms argues that, in the context of public concern about gender roles, the cross-dressing Moll in The Roaring Girl challenges gender hierarchy.
When, in 1566, Elizabeth v...
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The following essay addresses the critically neglected tragicomedies of Middleton's middle period, including The Witch, A Fair Quarrel, and More Dissemblers Besides Women, finding that Middleto...
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In this influential survey of Middleton's works, Eliot considers Middleton one of the age's great playwrights, praises his realism, and particularly extols the dramatist's portray...
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In the following essay, Knights examines Middleton's comedies and finds the writer overrated, particularly in respect to the "realism" Eliot and others had praised so highly.
T...
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The following survey of Middleton's works attributes to the dramatist a wide range of skills from comedic to tragic, as well as psychological penetration and clarity of vision.
'A gre...
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Charting the early development of Middleton's dramatic range, the following extracts focus on Middleton's innovation and experimentation.
I. the Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased
Translat...
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In this excerpt from her highly influential treatment of Middleton's plays, Heinemann argues that the playwright's "city comedies" satirize both city-dwellers and landed ge...
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The following essay asserts that Women Beware Women presents its audience with a purposeful incoherence, generating contradictory interpretations of power relations and sexual violation.
In Februar...
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In response to critical disagreement about the political situation of A Game at Chess, Yachnin views the play as both an idealization and a satire of English-Spanish relations.
Thomas Middleton�...
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Eliot, a celebrated Americanborn English poet, essayist, and critic, stressed in his commentary the importance of tradition, religion, and morality in literature. His emphasis on imagery, symbolism, a...
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In this essay, Ewbank assesses Women Beware Women, paying particular attention to the unity underlying what initially seems to be a loosely constructed mixture of realistic and moralistic elements. Sh...
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Wigler investigates the three love affairs in Women Be-ware Women—between Bianca and the Duke, Isabella and Hippolito, and Leantio and Livia—in support of his contention that "the...
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Bromley maintains that the corruption and immorality in Women Beware Women are caused by the collapse of the social structures of family, class, and church
In the last scene of Women Beware Women, ...
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Empson was an English critic, poet, and editor who is best known for Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), his seminal contribution to the formalist school of New Criticism. Empson's critical theory...
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A renowned English Shakespearean and Elizabethan scholar, Knights followed the precepts of I. A. Richards and F. R. Leavis as he attempted to identify an underlying pattern in all of Shakespeare...
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In the following essay, Huebert examines Middleton's depiction of sexuality and the desire for power in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Women Beware Women, and The Changeling. "Middleton�...
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Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton
Critical Essay by Algernon Charles Swinburne
