William Shakespeare

Thomas Middleton

FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARYTHE WORLD'S LEADING CENTER FOR SHAKESPEARE STUDIES"Each edition includes: "Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the playFull explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the playScene-by-scene plot summariesA key to famous lines and phrasesAn introduction to reading Shakespeare's languageAn essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the playIllustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books"Essay by" Coppelia Kahn The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit www.folger.edu.

The Life of Timon of Athens

William Rowley

This classic text is the tale of a woman who becomes involved in murder without realizing the terrible price she will pay for it. This edition includes an introduction which analyzes the play in detail, and a commentary illuminating difficulties in the play for the modern reader.

The Changeling

Cyril Tourneur

Locating the play in relation to the best recent criticism and exploring it's complexities with a contemporary eye furhters the reputution of these marvellous student editions.

The Revenger's Tragedy

Thomas Dekker

Elizabeth Cook

The Roaring Girl

John Webster

Gāmini Salgādo

Following the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign in the early seventeenth century, the new court of King James was beset by political instability and moral corruption. This atmosphere provided fertile ground for the dramatists of the age, whose plays explore the ways in which social decadence and the abuse of power breed resentment and lead inexorably to violence and bloody retribution. In Tourneur's The Revenger's Tragedy, the debauched son of an Italian Duke attempts to rape the virtuous Gloriana - a veiled reference to Elizabeth I. Webster's The White Devil depicts a sinister world of intrigue and murderous infidelity, while The Changeling, perhaps Middleton's supreme achievement, powerfully portrays a woman bringing about her own unwitting destruction. All three are masterpieces of brooding intensity, dominated by images of decay, disillusionment and death.

Three Revenge Tragedies

Alan Brissenden

Written for the adult players at the open-air Swan theatre in 1613, this master-piece of Jacobean city comedy signals its ironic nature even in the title: chaste maids, like most other goods and people in London's busiest commercial area, are likely to be fake. Money is more important than either happiness or honour; and the most coveted commodities to be bought with it are sex and social prestige. Middleton interweaves the fortunes of four families, who either seek to marry their children off as profitably as possible, to stop having any more for fear of poverty, or to acquire some in order to keep their property in the family. Most prosperous is the husband who pimps his wife to a rich knight and lets him support the household with his alimony. Like many early modern critics of London's enormous growth, this play warned: the city is a monster that lives off the money the country produces.

A Chaste Maid in Cheapside

Gary Taylor

John Lavagnino

Thomas Middleton is one of the few playwrights in English whose range and brilliance comes close to Shakespeare's. This handsome edition makes all Middleton's work accessible in a single volume, for the first time. It will generate excitement and controversy among all readers of Shakespeare and the English classics.

Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627), a bricklayer's son, rose to become one of the most eminent playwrights of the Jacobean period. Along with Ben Johnson he helped shape the dynamic course of drama in Renaissance England. His range is broad, as his work successfully covers comedy, tragedy, and history. Praised during his life as well as today, Middleton remains relevant and influential. In "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside" (1630), we see Middleton at the heights of his comedic powers. A satire set in the city, this play examines the power of money and sex in rapidly growing London. The titular maid, Moll Yellowhammer, is courted by several men, all eager to gain access to her father's fortunes. This romantic comedy rolls with a bawdiness and frivolity that is the source of its hilarity. Driven by a fundamental cynicism, the play is lightened by its unrelenting wit. Considered Middleton's best comedy, "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside" resonates today as it did upon its release.

This volume contains the four plays by Thomas Middleton which have most impressed the modern world: "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside" is the most complex amd effective of the city comedies; "Women Beware Women" and "The Changeling" (with William Rowley) are two of the most powerful Jacobean tragedies outside of Shakespeare -- studies in lust, power, violence, and self-delusive psychology; "A Game at Chess" was the single most popular play of the whole Shakespearean era, a satirical exposé of Jesuit plotting and Anglo-Spanish politics which played tp pacifist houses at the Globe until King James and his ministers banned it. The best-value collection available with the most officially up-to-date introduction; all the play texts are newly edited with richly informative annotation.

Women Beware Women, and Other Plays

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) was a writer of great versatility, and his career as a London dramatist spans the most productive, innovative, and exciting period of theatrical activity in the history of English drama. Best known for his tragedies, he also wrote many successful comedies of city life, and this volume offers the greatest among them. Includes: A Mad World, My Masters; Michaelmas Term; A Trick to Catch the Old One; No Wit, No Help Like a Woman's.

A Mad World, My Masters and Other Plays

As the Elizabethan era gave way to the reign of James I, England grappled with corruption within the royal court and widespread religious anxiety. Dramatists responded with morally complex plays of dark wit and violent spectacle, exploring the nature of death, the abuse of power and vigilante justice. In Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy a father failed by the Spanish court seeks his own bloody retribution for his son's murder. Shakespeare's 1603 version of Hamlet creates an avenging Prince of unique psychological depth, while Chettle's The Tragedy of Hoffman is a fascinating reworking of Hamlet's themes, probably for a rival theatre company. In Marston's Antonio's Revenge, thwarted love leads inexorably to gory reprisals and in Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, malcontent Vindice unleashes an escalating orgy of mayhem on a debauched Duke for his bride's murder, in a ferocious satire reflecting the mounting disillusionment of the age. Emma Smith's introduction considers the political and religious climate behind the plays and the dramatic conventions within them. This edition includes a chronology, playwrights' biographies and suggestions for further reading.

Five Revenge Tragedies

Alexander Dyce

The Works of Thomas Middleton, Now First Collected: Some account of Middleton and his works. The old law, by P. Massinger, T. Middleton and W. Rowley. Mayor of Queenborough. Blurt, master-constable. The phœnix. Michaelmas term

Thomas Middleton

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