The Phoenix

by Thomas Middleton

The full text of Thomas Middleton's play "The Phoenix". The text is a very easy to read modern 12 point Times New Roman--not a facsimilie. Benediction Classics Oxford. 2008. 167 pp

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1604

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

[Taylor Woolstenhulme · Rating 4 out of 5]

Context: I am a Middleton head. I vastly prefer his work to everything Shakespeare wrote that is not titled Timon of Athens. Been very slowly rereading all his plays.

The Phoenix is carried entirely by a single character - Tangle, a lawyer whose only hobby is frivolous lawsuits (he provokes his wife into cheating on him so he can sue her and the other man; when called a cuckold by another, he sues for libel); the other characters have to perform a goddamn exorcism on him to get him to stop. Every scene he appears in is just wonderful. So, so funny. I wish I could see it performed live just to see how an actor would deliver his lines.

I am a ride or die for Tangle. This play would be a lesser Middleton, probably his worst, without him.