ABSTRACT
Michaelmas Term may be seen to echo the influential Volpone of Jonson, and the influence of Marston, too, in dramatizing violence, iniquity and disease in familiar urban locations is equally apparent. The intensity with which Michaelmas Term is written, the urgency with which the action is articulated, testify to the inspiration Middleton found in the genre city comedy at this point of its early maturity. A Trick to Catch the Old One reveals the influence of Jonson's Volpone. Certain sequences are handled in an overtly schematic manner. In Popular comedy the characteristic looseness of articulation derives largely from the playwrights' aim to present episodes purely for their comic potential. The psychological acuteness of Middleton's character drawing is manifest in the villain-miser Hoard. Middleton presents in his mature comedies a moral and critical analysis of city society; his forceful purpose does not, however, deny the fuller human qualities in his villains.
