ABSTRACT

This volume celebrates Thomas Middleton’s legacy as a dramatist, marking the 400th anniversary of Middleton’s final and most contentious work for the public theatres, A Game at Chess (1624).

The collection is divided into three sections: ‘Critical and Textual Reception’, ‘Afterlives and Legacies’, and ‘Practice and Performance’. This division reflects the book’s holistic approach to Middleton’s canon, and its emphasis on the continuing significance of Middleton’s writing to the study of early modern English drama. Each section offers an assessment of the place of Middleton’s drama in culture, criticism, and education today through a range of critical approaches.

Featuring work from a range of voices (from early career, independent, and seasoned academics and practitioners), the collection will be appropriate for both specialists in early modern literature and drama who are interested in both theory and practice, and students or scholars researching Middleton’s historical significance to the study of early theatre.

chapter |9 pages

Introduction

‘[P]oore Chronicler of a Lord Maior's Naked Truth’? Introducing Middleton's Theatrical Legacy

part Section 1|65 pages

Critical and Textual Reception

chapter 1|13 pages

Our Other Shakespeare?

The Legacy and Controversies of the Oxford Middleton

chapter 2|23 pages

Creative Marking

Middleton's and Crane's Punctuation in A Game at Chesse

chapter 3|15 pages

49The Puritan's Paper Trail

Or, Print, Plays, and Plot-Holes

chapter 4|12 pages

‘I Think It Was a Shirt; I Know Not Well’

The Depiction and Deception of Linens in The Widow

part Section 2|76 pages

Afterlives and Legacies

chapter 5|12 pages

Roaring Boys

Assembling Masculinity on Middleton's Stage

chapter 6|13 pages

‘Black, Wicked, and Unnatural’

Locating Monstrosity in The Revenger's Tragedy

chapter 8|17 pages

Vigilante Irony

Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy and Modern Media

part Section 3|62 pages

Practice and Performance

chapter 10|14 pages

‘The Full Scope, the Manner, and Intent’

Questions of Scale and Context in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Productions of Women Beware Women

chapter 12|14 pages

Reconstructing The Sun in Aries

An Interview with Beyond Shakespeare