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 Thomas
Middleton was christened son of William Middleton and Anne Snow
at St. Lawrence in the Old Jewry on April 18, 1580. As a lad
in his teens he published The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased
(1597) and Micro-Cynicon, Six Snarling Satires (1599),
but meanwhile, in April, 1598, had matriculated at Queen's College,
Oxford. There is no record of his connection with the theater
until May 22, 1602, when Henslowe records in his Diary a payment
made to him together with Munday, Drayton, and Webster
"in earnest of a book called Caesar's Fall."
From this time almost to his death numerous references to his
dramatic activity show that he sometimes wrote alone but more
often with other well-known dramatists, notably Dekker
and Rowley. Two satirical tales, The Black Book and Father
Hubbard's Tale, published in 1604, reveal his early interest
in the seamy side of London life, which he was to turn to good
account in his comedies of manners written between 1604 and 1611.
Among these may be mentioned A Trick to Catch the Old One;
A Mad World, My Masters; and Michaelmas Term--all
dealing with the duping of an unsuspecting victim by London sharpers;
Your Five Gallants which reveals the wiles of five different
types of swindlers and ruffians; and that laughter-provoking
farce, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Middleton's one unaided
tragedy, Women, Beware Women, written about 1612, was
followed in 1613 by his first masque, The Triumphs of Truth;
and until his death he was in demand as a writer of this type
of entertainment. The temporary amalgamation of the companies
of the companies of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Charles in
1614 or 1615 brought Middleton and Rowley together, and their
period of collaboration began shortly thereafter ... From 1620
until his death Middleton held the office of city chronologer.
He was buried in the Newington Butts Parish Church on July 4,
1627.
Middleton possesses no unusual poetic gifts, and his style
is often uneven. His strength lies rather in his constructive
skill, and in his fine dramatic sense, which enables him to give
rapidity of movement and effectiveness to his scenes, and to
make very real his pictures of low life in London. These features
are well illustrated by A Trick to Catch the Old One,
which was composed between 1604 and 1606, entered in the Stationer's
Register October 7, 1607, and issued in two quartos dated 1608,
and again in 1616. The plot, ingeniously contrived save for the
lack of moral justice in the dénouement, is presumably
of Middleton's own invention, and the materials of the play are
drawn from the dramatist's experience in London life.
The Changeling, the best of Middleton and Rowley's
joint efforts, although written between 1622 and the date of
its performance at Whitehall on January 4, 1624, was not published
until 1653. The story of Beatrice Joanna and Deflores is drawn
from John Reynolds' The Triumphs of God's Revenge against
the Crying and Execrable Sin of Murther, entered in the Stationer's
Register June 7, 1621, and published later the same year; and
one episode in the story is derived from Leonard Digges' translation
of the Spanish novel of Cespedes, Gerardo, the Unfortunate
Spaniard (1622). For the sub-plot, which gives the play its
name, no source is known. According to Miss Pauline G. Wiggin
(An Inquiry into the Authorship of the Middleton-Rowley Plays,
Boston, 1897), "the first and last scenes, as well as the
underplot" of the play are by Rowley. The play has been
accorded high praise as a psychological tragedy and as one of
the most successful plays written in collaboration in the whole
range of Elizabethan drama.
†This article was originally published
in Elizabethan and Stuart Plays Ed. Charles Read Baskervill.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1934. pp. 1279-80.
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