SOURCE: "Thomas Middleton," in Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy, Cambridge at the University Press, 1935, pp. 213-39.

Bradbrook is an English scholar noted especially for her commentary on the development of Elizabethan drama and poetry. In her criticism, she combines both biographical and historical research, paying particular attention to the stage conventions of Elizabethan and earlier periods. In the following excerpt from her influential essay on Middleton, she evaluates the naturalistic treatment of character in The Changeling and provides an elaboration of William Empson's contention that the tragedy is well unified.

Middleton's tragedies are as similar in their methods of construction as they are different from the plays [of other Elizabethan dramatists]. Rowley's name appears on the title page of The Changeling, but it is difficult to see the possibility of his sharing in the main plot, for its unity is of a kind which not even the...