What do you think?
Rate this book
A Fair Quarrel
Book by Thomas Middleton, William Rowley
130 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1616
15 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Middleton
676 books56 followersThomas 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 12, 2013
Thomas Middleton has always seemed to me to hover in the wings of fashion, to be always appreciated and little known, to be referred to but little studied to be known as a name but not known. Part of the mystery surrounding him concerns his authorship. Many of his plays were apparently written in collaboration and there is dispute about some plays-notably The Revenger's Tragedy. One thing which strikes me reading this play a second tme (I have never seen it and there is indeed seldom an opportunity to see it) is how much of it seems to be written not just under the influence of Shakespeare but in response to Shakespeare. The second thing of which I am more convinced now than I was before, is that the author of A Fair Quarrel and the author of The Revenger's Tragedy cannot be the same person, more convinced but not entirely, since The Revenger's Tragedy is also very clearly a response to and parody of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
The intrigues of this remarkable play concern essentially overblown notions of honour and reputation. The Elizabethan age was characterised by Salvador de Madariaga in his famous essay on Hamlet as « the age of Spain ». Salvador de Madariaga convincingly argued that the romantic image of Hamlet as a beardless soulful Elizabethan lake poet was quite inaccurate. Hamlet was bearded and behatted and dressed in solemn black, the quintessence of a Spanish gentleman, « jealous in honour and sudden and quick in quarrel. »
If it seems likely that the authors of The Revenger's Tragedy and A Fair Quarrel were not the same, there can be no doubt that the authors of A Fair Quarrel and say Othello are not the same. This play targets two elements of Shakespearean virtue : one is the the notion of honour and the exaggeration of the importance of honour and the other, more radically still, a questioning of the supreme importance of female virtue (chastity). The quarrel between Ager and the Colonel seems to me to be a reflection of similar presentations of the theme in Shakespeare's plays, for example in Othello where Cassio's loss of his good name is a disaster and Iago, the supreme villain dismisses reputation as a mere word. That is Shakespeare’s view but Middleton clearly argues here for good sense, for restraint, for not risking one's life for a mere slight spiking perhaps unthinkingly. Middleton be it noted is writing for and as a member of the middle or artisan class. The virtues and views of Shakespeare and his plays are aristocratic. This is even more striking in the attitude to women. Several Shakespearean plays, for example Othello, Much Ado about Nothing, Cymbeline centre on virtue unfairly suspected. A villain misleads a man to thinking his wife or betrothed untrue but never does Shakespeare question the underlying code that if a woman is « false » she is « rotten ». In A Fair Quarrel daringly I think for the time, Jane the picture of true virtue is pregnant outside wedlock and is clearly seen by the play-write as being virtuous because she maintains her determination to secure officially her marriage to the man she considers herself affianced to, the father of her child. In his introduction to the New Mermaids edition RV Holdsworth assures us that this is how the crowd of playgoers would have seen it. Perhaps. I am not sure I would want to take a time ship and test that out for myself. Be that as it may, this complex and intriguing play challenges the notion of the supreme necessity of female chastity and mocks what it sees as the overblown insistence on male honour.
It is not an exaggeration to say that this English strikes me as strongly English in a way that the aristocratic style of Shakespeare is not. It comes as no surprise to see Middleton exercising a knowledge of Dutch, the language of merchants and a successful middle class in contrast to Shakespeare’s not infrequent French and Italian and even occasional Spanish references.
The language and double entendres of this play are remarkable. The love of absurd new words with their suggestiveness and hints at other languages recalls of all writers, James Joyce. The following would not look amiss in Joyce's Ulysses :
Chough : Look to it I say, thy bride's a bronstrops
Trimtram : And knows the thing that men wear in their slops
Chough : A hippocrene, a tweak, for and a fucus.
The salacious humour brushes shoulders with the poe faced piety, something quite alien to Sahkespeare but very English and at its most sinsiter, the English viciousness of condemning vice discussed in detail in English tabloid journalism. As a young man today, Thomas Middleton would probably be a features editor of The Mail or The Star. As it is, he was born in a very different age, where his considerable talents were put to much less malicious use.
The intrigues of this remarkable play concern essentially overblown notions of honour and reputation. The Elizabethan age was characterised by Salvador de Madariaga in his famous essay on Hamlet as « the age of Spain ». Salvador de Madariaga convincingly argued that the romantic image of Hamlet as a beardless soulful Elizabethan lake poet was quite inaccurate. Hamlet was bearded and behatted and dressed in solemn black, the quintessence of a Spanish gentleman, « jealous in honour and sudden and quick in quarrel. »
If it seems likely that the authors of The Revenger's Tragedy and A Fair Quarrel were not the same, there can be no doubt that the authors of A Fair Quarrel and say Othello are not the same. This play targets two elements of Shakespearean virtue : one is the the notion of honour and the exaggeration of the importance of honour and the other, more radically still, a questioning of the supreme importance of female virtue (chastity). The quarrel between Ager and the Colonel seems to me to be a reflection of similar presentations of the theme in Shakespeare's plays, for example in Othello where Cassio's loss of his good name is a disaster and Iago, the supreme villain dismisses reputation as a mere word. That is Shakespeare’s view but Middleton clearly argues here for good sense, for restraint, for not risking one's life for a mere slight spiking perhaps unthinkingly. Middleton be it noted is writing for and as a member of the middle or artisan class. The virtues and views of Shakespeare and his plays are aristocratic. This is even more striking in the attitude to women. Several Shakespearean plays, for example Othello, Much Ado about Nothing, Cymbeline centre on virtue unfairly suspected. A villain misleads a man to thinking his wife or betrothed untrue but never does Shakespeare question the underlying code that if a woman is « false » she is « rotten ». In A Fair Quarrel daringly I think for the time, Jane the picture of true virtue is pregnant outside wedlock and is clearly seen by the play-write as being virtuous because she maintains her determination to secure officially her marriage to the man she considers herself affianced to, the father of her child. In his introduction to the New Mermaids edition RV Holdsworth assures us that this is how the crowd of playgoers would have seen it. Perhaps. I am not sure I would want to take a time ship and test that out for myself. Be that as it may, this complex and intriguing play challenges the notion of the supreme necessity of female chastity and mocks what it sees as the overblown insistence on male honour.
It is not an exaggeration to say that this English strikes me as strongly English in a way that the aristocratic style of Shakespeare is not. It comes as no surprise to see Middleton exercising a knowledge of Dutch, the language of merchants and a successful middle class in contrast to Shakespeare’s not infrequent French and Italian and even occasional Spanish references.
The language and double entendres of this play are remarkable. The love of absurd new words with their suggestiveness and hints at other languages recalls of all writers, James Joyce. The following would not look amiss in Joyce's Ulysses :
Chough : Look to it I say, thy bride's a bronstrops
Trimtram : And knows the thing that men wear in their slops
Chough : A hippocrene, a tweak, for and a fucus.
The salacious humour brushes shoulders with the poe faced piety, something quite alien to Sahkespeare but very English and at its most sinsiter, the English viciousness of condemning vice discussed in detail in English tabloid journalism. As a young man today, Thomas Middleton would probably be a features editor of The Mail or The Star. As it is, he was born in a very different age, where his considerable talents were put to much less malicious use.
May 26, 2025
Why was this actually really sweet??? The female community that steps up to rescue Jane, the couple getting their happy ending, the father choosing not to desert his daughter - everyone is so nice! Literally the jilted bridegroom is thrilled to attend his ex’s wedding. It’s actually adorable. My headcanon is that Jane and Anne actually raise the baby together as “roommates” and live a long and happy life together without any aggravating men waving swords around.
September 21, 2024
Okay, short and sweet: I think criticism of the kind the intro makes (the play shows language descended into unsignifying anarchy; the supreme value of truth; the interplay of the three plots; the Oedipal complex in the captain) has to be earned through a more intangible kind of quality. And I'm not sure this play earns that kind of criticism. Rowley's share is too big. Middleton's psychological portraits are subtle but not entertaining. The roaring school is not as funny as the "game of vapours" in Bartholomew Fair (its major source). The sudden turn to virtue is in every Middleton play, and the work is more conventional (as tragicomedy) than subversive (despite what the intro thinks). The play ends far before it really ends. The interest for me is in what it says about Middleton--the obsessive fixation on chastity, the rising-middle-class virtues revealed in the criticism of rising-middle-class virtues. But obsession has not led, in this play, in my opinion, to powerful images, as it does in Shakespeare (e.g. on appearance/reality in Hamlet; stamp/coin in Measure for Measure). Still, fun. 3*
May 29, 2014
I can't even decide where to begin with why I love this play. It has everything... Especially lots of lovely swordsmanship. The "roaring school" is especially awesome, but the whole play, from beginning to end, is a masterwork, far outstripping the usually-dated jokes in other Middleton plays. Cannot recommend enough. The dynamic duo of Middleton and Rowley strike again.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews