The Collected Works

by Thomas Middleton, Gary Taylor (Editor), John Lavagnino (Editor)

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) - 'our other Shakespeare' - is the only other Renaissance playwright who created lasting masterpieces of both comedy and tragedy; he also wrote the greatest box-office hit of early modern London, the unique history play A Game at Chess. His range extends beyond these traditional genres to tragicomedies, masques, pageants, pamphlets, epigrams, and Biblical and political commentaries, written alone or in collaboration with Shakespeare, Webster, Dekker, Ford, Heywood, Rowley, and others. Compared by critics to Aristophanes and Ibsen, Racine and Joe Orton, he has influenced writers as diverse as Aphra Behn and T. S. Eliot. Though repeatedly censored in his own time, he has since come to be particularly admired for his representations of the intertwined pursuits of sex, money, power, and God. The Collected Works brings together for the first time in a single volume all the works currently attributed to Middleton. It is the first edition of Middleton's works since 1886. The texts are printed in modern spelling and punctuation, with critical introductions and foot-of-the-page commentaries; they are arranged in chronological order, with a special section of Juvenilia. The volume is introduced by essays on Middleton's life and reputation, on early modern London, and on the varied theatres of the English Renaissance. Extensively illustrated, it incorporates much new information on Middleton's life, canon, texts, and contexts. A self-consciously 'federal edition', The Collected Works applies contemporary theories about the nature of literature and the history of the book to editorial practice.

Genres: Drama, Poetry, Plays, Fiction

2016 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1840

About the author

Thomas Middleton (1580 – 1627) was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson as among the most successful and prolific of playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period. He was one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in comedy and tragedy. Also a prolific writer of masques and pageants, he remains one of the most noteworthy and distinctive of Jacobean dramatists.

Reviews

[Robert]

The Phoenix

Middleton bursts on to the scene with a highly competent, if unambitious, debut tragicomedy with the level of peril to be found in, say, Much Ado About Nothing. It doesn't have Shakespeare's level of wit, poetry or word-play but it does have a slight satirical edge absent from most of the Bard's work, more reminiscent of Ben Jonson, in fact. (Lawyers and judges come in for heavy criticism, some of it in very comic fashion.) Certain tropes of the era are present; disguised characters and treason against the ruling family, for example, drive this well-constructed plot to it's neat set of final scene revelations and resolutions. I'd go see this ahead of several of Bill's lesser works.

News from Gravesend: Sent to Nobody
Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton

Published as a "pamphlet," a form of publication that the study of Shakespeare's work will not even reveal the existence of, this is a poem about the plague, prompted by the outbreak of 1603, which was a particularly severe one for the period. It is prefaced by an "Epistle Dedicatory" of unprecedented length, taking up nearly half the pamphlet. The dedicatee is "Nobody" a symbolic personage who is specifically not any real person. The reason for this is explained in the Epistle as
a plea for a change from writers currying favour from rich patrons in order to earn a living to some other method. This and the subsequent attack on the wealthy members of the legal professions for abandoning London to its fate in favour of Winchester during plague outbreaks is all rather political and I'm surprised that it passed the censors. There's nothing directly attacking the King or the institutions of the Monarchy so perhaps they were not too bothered.

I'm not much familiar with the lyric poetry of the period. I've read Shakespeare's contributions and nothing else to speak of. Being neither a narrative poem, nor the sort of personal topics addressed in the sonnets, but instead a discursive examination of a topical subject with moral, political and philosophical implications, this was again unique in my experience. It's also good, with some exceptionally vivid imagery (buboes like purple grapes sticks in my mind) although the science of disease is entirely discredited, now, as is the notion put forward by the authors that it is really a God-sent punishment of the immoral.

A very interesting read from the perspective of learning about the Jacobean literary world and on its own terms as a literary work.

Father Hubburd's Tales

Another satirical pamphlet, existing in two versions, the later of which is longer and contains three stories rather than two. There's an academic debate about how this state of affairs came about and I'm still reading about it in the Middleton Companion. There's a frame story about an ant that can transform into a human, telling his adventures to Philomel of Metamorphoses fame in her nightingale form. Each story is satirical, attacking the class structure and poor treatment of...poor people. The last seems heavily autobiographical, being about patronage of writers. I detect considerable bitterness over the matter, considering also that the "Epistle Dedicatory" of News from Gravesend makes the same points. There's also further attacks on lawyers and the negativity towards lawyers and judges seems to be rooted in personal experience, too, his mother having been embroiled in divorce proceedings and subsequent disputes for years. Anyway, it's a fun little set of tales.

The Patient Man and the Honest Whore
This is a comedy that reminds me of Much Ado About Nothing, which has two plot strands that don't really have much to do with each other and are mainy an excuse for wit and shenanigans. Here it is the same, although one could argue that there are actually three plot strands loosely woven together, eventually being tied up together in a neat bow by the end of the long final scene.

There's plenty of wit and potential for comedy here, though it's not on the level of Benedick and Beatrice's bickering and I think it could be successfully staged for contemporary audiences.

This is the second work in this volume where it is believed that Middleton was the junior partner to Dekker and I have to say on this evidence Dekker is himself worth a read. The average standard of writers of the period seems ridiculously high.

I read somewhere the suggestion that one reason why Middleton fell off the radar whilst Shakespeare did not is that he couldn't be Bowdlerised, because if you tried you'd find nothing was left of many of his works. This would be a case in point; central characters and an entire plot strand would have to be removed. Not even the title would survive unscathed.

Anyway, amusing daftness!

The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased

Absolutely atrocious! Even dramatists with excellent reputations were once inept teenagers, it seems - usually they don't get their horrible juvenilia published before they enter their third decade, though. No wonder the dedicatee didn't cough up any money for this poem - it's complete drivel that nobody with any appreciation would want to be associated with. For completists only and best treated with a big dollop of laughter in order to stave off a breakdown. It's a very loose adaptation of one of the apocryphal books of the Bible; probably best to read it there.

The Whole Magnificent Entertainment
Being several pageants, by several authors, in celebration of the coronation of James I of England - delayed several months by a plague outbreak. Several descriptions of the affair were published shortly afterward and here they are conflated into a complete description of all parts. Each part takes the form of a Triumphal Arch, constructed from wood for the event, under which the Procession of the King, his family and retinue (which was extensive) passed. The Arches were populated with allegorical and mythical figures, some of whom gave speeches. Middleton's contribution is one of these speeches.

It's an odd literary form that I had not come across before, mainly because of the dominance of Shakespeare - who never wrote a pageant - over all other writers of the era. His lack of participation in any genres but drama, lyric and narrative verse tends to obscure the fact that any others existed! Middleton was freelance and turned his skill to any form of literature that would pay.

Michaelmass Term
This is a comedy reminiscent of Jonson, being set in London and featuring swindlers and conmen as the villains - Volpone and The Alchemist spring to mind. It doesn't have Jonson's extremely heavy reliance on Classical Greek and Latin literary references, though. It also reminds me of Shakespeare, with dense punning and daft romantic plot lines. Unfortunately, most of the wit and puns are focused on bawdy double-entendres and the like that have, over time, mostly become very obscure and opaque, requiring the copious glosses to be recognised and understood - and we all know that a joke that has to be explained isn't funny any more. Presumably circa 400 years ago everybody would have been smirking and sniggering throughout.

The story offers plenty of opportunity for other laughs, though, with hardly anybody recognisable to one or more others, including close family members (one character going through at least four aliases!) and the ensuing dramatic irony providing laughs and tension in equal measure.

It's structurally conventional, with main plot and sub-plot, but the sub-plot is poorly integrated and might have been better excised completely. The final Act resolves everything extremely abruptly, as was the usual fashion. But plot structure did not seem to have the same level of importance then that we tend to give it, now. For example, examine the structure of A Midsummer Night's Dream; it's a complete disaster! That doesn't stop performances being magnificently entertaining, though.

Microcynicon, or Six Snarling Satires

This second item of juvenalia confused scholars for some time because the external evidence suggested it was by Middleton but it seemed too immature to be his. Then they learned he was born ten years earlier than previously supposed...

It's a vast improvement on The Wisdom of Solomon, but it's still not great poetry. It takes a pretty weird turn by satirising satire towards the end! The satire against "ingles" leads me to believe Shakespeare might be a misleading representative of the era in his apparent tolerance of homosexuality.

A Trick to Catch the Old One
Apparently widely considered to be Middleton's best comedy, yet for me certainly less funny than Michaelmas Term. I struggled through this, but through no fault of Middleton's; my mental health has been unreliable and reading anything demanding in those circumstances is tough, as I know well from experience. Pausing until improvement makes for it's own problems with following a convoluted plot involving characters whose relationships can be difficult to keep clear. So this didn't really receive an optimal hearing. Nevertheless, despite perhaps not being the funniest, this play is interesting in social and moral terms. It makes a courtesan not only the heroine but clever and spirited enough to be instrumental in her own success in beating the odds and securing herself a respectable future. It also promotes the values of repentence and forgiveness and sympathises with Jane as largely a victim in ending up as a kept mistress in the first place. These are emerging themes in the canon that contrast with Shakespearean heroines who tend to be accused of crimes of which they are innocent. Middleton instead has women who are socially disgraced but are victims of circumstance or malice rise up and gain respectability, which he considers a form of natural justice.

The Ghost of Lucrece
Middleton's take on the story of Lucrece and Tarquin is to summon their ghosts from Hell and listen as Lucrece gives her complaint. In a period of less than four years, Middleton went from the risible Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased to this, a vastly more competent effort. It's still a bit muddled, with even the most learned academics still a bit confused between the voices of Lucrece, Tarquin and the author in places but you can read it for more than unintended humour, at least.

A Mad World, My Masters
Of the comedies so far, this seems to me to have the most obvious opportunities for visual humour and is more Shakespearian in approach, too. That said, it's still a city comedy rather than an aristocratic or royal one and the theme of socially outcast women making good is all present and correct.

The Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets
A short, daft, prose satire that underwent a complicated history of revision, adaptation and addition by multiple authors, the latest of which is believed to be Middleton.

A Yorkshire Tragedy
In my experience of plays of this era (I roughly estimate ~60-70, there are heaps more I haven't read), this is unique, in two ways. Firstly it is the only play that attempts a re-enactment/reconstruction of contemporary events, without allegorical disguise. Secondly, it is short - less than half the length of a more typical piece.

The subject is a brief news-sensation that overtook the nation, spawning ballads, a pamphlet and this play. A (Yorkshire) man murdered two of his children and wounded his wife, was arrested and hung. That's it. Why was this considered more remarkable than any other of the many murders that took place across the country that year? Two reasons, I believe: First, the victims were family to the perpetrator. Second, there was no obvious motive. The former seems more unnatural/sensational even than an attack on random strangers and the second is mysterious. Baffling motivations or lack there-of seem to me to be at the core of modern True Crime popular culture. It's why mass murderers and serial killers dominate in people's awareness - the scale and inexplicability cause fascination. The far greater number of killings that are "crimes of passion", financially motivated, or gang/organised crime related don't appeal anywhere near as much. Fiction covers the who/howdunnit interest better than most real murders, where it is usually obvious how it was done and frequently fairly easy to guess who did it, or at least why, after a little investigation - proving it beyond reasonable doubt being the hard task. I had believed that True Crime as popular culture for profit (excluding sensational newspapers) was a 20th Century invention, but it turns out it has been around over four hundred years at least.

This play is based on a pamphlet that gave a fictionalised account of events and posited demonic posession as the explanation for the murders - a desperate grab at a passing straw of a solution even in an age of alchemists, quacks and very literal interpretations of Biblical stories. Middleton doesn't quite go that far, I think, interpreting it more as a diabolically prompted temporary insanity. As real solutions, neither idea is very satisfactory to me. The mystery as to why he did it remains.

Another facet of the literature of the time that reading Shakespeare alone won't show you.

The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinary

The fantastic conceit of War, Famine and Pestilence meet at a tavern is mostly wasted on (not very) humourous tales of life during a plague outbreak. Gallows humour at a desperate time that for me at least, doesn't raise more than the ghost of a chuckle.

Timon of Athens

My views have changed little from my previous reading:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I did notice, however, that it is entirely unclear who buried Timon, erected his grave marker and put his epitaph on it. (Timon appears to have composed the epitaph himself.) Maybe the Steward did it?

Plato's Cap
This is a parody of the era's most popular literary form, the almanac. It's approach is to make comedic predictions of events that are guaranteed to come true because they are commonplaces that happen every year, e.g. barbers losing business to syphilis because it causes people's hair to fall out! Of course, parody is funniest when one is familiar with the material being parodied, which in this case has to be a very low proportion of modern readers - and I'm definitely not in that category. Hence this was almost certainly far more amusing to the author's contemporary readers and indeed, spoof almanacs such as this one were the second most popular literary form of the era. Nevertheless, it's short, amusing and a further education on the literature of the period, which as I have pointed out before, is far more diverse and voluminous than a reading of solely the works of Shakespeare would indicate.

The Puritan Widow
Well, this took me ages to get through, for various reasons, but it was worth it! It starts out much like any other comedy of the era - then it diverges from the *ahem* script, further and further and Act 4 comes along and totally subverts expectations, only for the beginning of Act 5 to subvert the subverted expectations and the end of Act 5 to subvert the subverted subverted expectations! - ending up largely back on *ahem* script... The scope for visual humour seems large. I'd go see a stage production (assuming I'm seated up in the gods and nobody else is there except the players.) Aspects seem very Middletonian - he's got clear tropes evident even from the handful of plays I've read so far. He's closer to Jonson than Shakespeare, despite the fact that he appears to have collaborated with/adapted Shakespeare and not Jonson.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an impressive work. But let’s start by addressing the fanzine-like swooning taking place over Middleton related to the release of this book. There is much hyperbole putting him on par with Shakespeare, plus some odd hand wringing over how Shakespeare’s legacy clouded Middleton’s brilliance.

Let’s just be clear here: Middleton is less known because he isn’t nearly as brilliant as Shakespeare. Personally, you could put any writer’s name in place of “Middleton” in that sentence and it’s true.

That’s not Middleton’s fault. I haven’t seen anyone who comes close to the masterful poetry and fertile imagination of the Bard. So, let’s stop that silly talk. It does Middleton and his works no favors. He’s good. I like the plays that I’ve read. He's heads and shoulders above Beaumont and Fletcher.

There is a darkness and a salaciousness in his plays. He’s created some compelling characters, and I’m sure his plays work well on the stage.

My kvetching aside, this is a great volume. (Too bad it’s not two volumes.) The introduction and playwright’s bio are very good. It includes copious notes. I can understand the editors’ pride in this and their attempts to magnify Middleton’s brilliance.

If you love English renaissance theatre and verse drama, this is must have/must read. (Though it’s size is a huge deterrent to reading it.)


The Changeling *** – The most interesting part of the play -- rife with murder, adultery, ghosts, and an insane asylum -- is the relationship between the beautiful Beatrice and the wretchedly ugly De Flores. Her supercilious manner and his deprecating neediness at the beginning evolve into his assertion of himself and her emotional decay (and love for De Flores).

But these insights are fleeting as we’re presented a moderately entertaining story of murder and adultery, with a vaguely connected subplot about a man pretending to be insane so he can seduce the asylum operator’s wife. (Only at the very end are these two stories connected, and only by the thinnest thread. Yes, many a PhD student has sweated over justifying the connection of these two plots, but as they say in politics, if you're explaining, you're losing. They simply don't make sense together and audiences have known that viscerally since it first hit the stage.)

The ending itself is an unsatisfying deus ex machina with Beatrice’s sudden confession to her husband coming out of nowhere. And then there is the tenuous connection between the two plots.

All of that aside, there is a kernal of a story here that makes the play worth reading, and the verse is quite good. If you like verse drama, I recommend this memorable work. (less)


Macbeth (Middleton **, Shakespeare *****) – Honestly, I feel a bit queasy when I think of the original Shakespeare version of Macbeth being hacked apart and changed. What have we lost forever? Ugh! The editors say that the compilers of the first folio proudly included Middleton’s “improved” version. I’m not so sure. They were compiling hundreds of pages of manuscripts – if not thousands – and perhaps this hacked up version is on the only one they could find. No quarto existed. It was a huge undertaking and they didn’t have the time or energy to pore over every play. Look at the botched up version of Hamlet they included, not to mention Measure for Measure. We can only hope Middleton had enough sense not to toss out any great scenes/poetry. We can only hope.

Timon of Athens *** -- You can see my thoughts here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Women Beware of Women *** (04/03)
The Roaring Girl *** (07/03)


Side Note on a Weighty Matter:
This book literally injured by wrist while I tried to read it. It weighs over seven pounds – it is the heaviest paperback I have ever held. It is crazy heavy. One must lay it on a table to read it. But admittedly that’s part of the allure of this almost unreadable monster. Just put it on your bookshelf and admire its bulk. Watch the poor pressed-wood shelf sag beneath its girth. Impress your friends with its wrist-crumpling obesity. Drop it on unsuspecting burglars’ heads. Bricks literally weigh less than this out-sized tome. It’s so fat your other books may fear it will eat them. For this reason alone, you gotta own this book.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite.