Thomas Middleton Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Paul Yachnin

Critical Essay by Paul Yachnin

SOURCE: "A Game At Chess: Thomas Middleton's 'Praise of Folly'," in Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 2, June, 1987, pp. 107-23.

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's Game at Chess might have been a play for Puritans, but it certainly was not a play only for Puritans. John Chamberlain, who was in a better position than we to know something about the play's audience, wrote [in a letter to Dudley Carleton, 21 August 1624, quoted in A Game at Chesse, ed. R. C. Bald] that it was "frequented by all sorts of people old and young, rich and poore, masters and servants, papists and puritans, wise men etc. churchmen and statesmen…. " While Chamberlain's census of the audience may not be strictly accurate, his main...
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