Thomas Middleton

'A great observer of human nature, without fear, without sentiment, without prejudice...' wrote T. S. Eliot in his essay on Middleton. For long Middleton's fame has rested upon two tragedies, Women Beware Women and The Changeling (with William Rowley), which have been especially admired for the surprisingly complex depiction of their female characters. In recent years the professional theatre has come increasingly to appreciate the range of Middleton's comedy, the keenness of his satirical insight into the society of his time, and the excellence of his stage-craft.
Middleton was among the most prolific of Jacobean dramatists, both independently and as a collaborator. In his essay, Professor Mulryne has focussed attention upon six representative plays. He touches briefly upon the still disputed question of the authorship of The Second Maiden's Tragedy, a piece only assigned to Middleton in the late nineteenth-century. The bulk of his essay is devoted to four works, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, the most trenchant of Middleton's comedies on bourgeois life, A Game at Chess, a highly successful satire on contemporary politics, and the two tragedies referred to above, which mark the climax of his dramatic art. Like Shakespeare, Middleton served a long apprenticeship in comedy, and perhaps carried the principle of extending and modifying tragedy by the intimate association of comedy even further than Shakespeare.