ABSTRACT
The importance of A Game at Chess to theories of castration has not until now been recognized, largely because Freud himself never read it (or anything else by Middleton). Of course, Freud was not alone; except for specialists in English Renaissance drama, few people today even recognize the title. But the play was once as well known as anything by Middleton’s contemporary and sometime collaborator, William Shakespeare. Middleton’s last play had the longest consecutive run, the largest initial attendance, and the greatest ticket revenue of any play of the English Renaissance. In nine days in August 1624, A Game at Chess was seen by perhaps one-seventh of the total population of London, and many more who did not see it heard about it, or heard the “extraordinary applause” and “extraordinary concourse” of its audiences. It stimulated more immediate commentary than any play, masque, or pageant of its age. Accounts of it were dispatched to Brussels, Florence, Madrid, Paris, and Venice. In England, it was rumored to have received a secret performance at court; certainly, it provoked legal action by the king, the lord chamberlain, and the Privy Council. It
survives in more manuscript texts and appeared in more editions in one year (and in more surreptitious editions) than any other early modern play. And it was the first individual English play published with an (expensive) engraved title page-in fact, it was published with both the first and the second such engraved title page (because the third printing supplied a new engraving).
