Early dramatic historians placed William Rowley in the third rank of dramatic writers, and recent critics, who admire his contributions to the collaborations of his later years, have not significantly improved his standing. Four plays which Rowley wrote unaided have survived--A Shoemaker a Gentleman, All's Lost by Lust, A Match at Midnight, and A New Wonder, A Woman Never Vexed --but the greater part of his reputation was won as collaborator with some of the leading playwrights of his time. The most notable of these was Thomas Middleton, with whom Rowley wrote his two most highly regarded works, A Fair Quarrel and The Changeling. Proper appreciation of his place in dramatic history has been hampered by scanty biographical information and some difficulty in identifying his collaborations and his share in them. Nevertheless, Rowley's place in theatrical history is assured by his prominence as an actor-manager, particularly as the actor of fat-clown parts that he wrote himself or were written for him, and as a representative of that class of seventeenth-century dramatist which provided the everyday entertainments of the public stage.
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