Your Five Gallants

by Thomas Middleton

Your Five Gallants is a Jacobean comedy by Thomas Middleton. It falls into the subgenre of city comedy. Allusions in the play point to a date of authorship of 1607. The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 22 March 1608. The quarto published by bookseller Richard Bonian is undated, but probably followed the registration by a small gap and appeared later in 1608.

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1607

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

[Gill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Middleton's never actively bad, but this seemed to drag at the end. On stage, performed at speed, it could be funny, offering lots of opportunities with comic business as props change hands again and again. In reading, not quite so fast, and the script seems never to have been properly organised. Some funny scenes, with a pawnbroker renting out clothing as soon as it reaches him. Complicated to get right, however.

Read as part of the REP online reading of the repertoire of the Jacobean children's companies.

[Sena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read with a lot of sex jokes

[Jiang Yuqi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The storyline is really difficult to follow. I wonder how the early audiences might feel about this. However, Middleton writes comedy funny enough for me to tumble through all the plot twists.