First
Writings Marriage and
Maturity Thirty-Something
Final
Decade Personality
and Achievement
Middleton began his fortieth
year working on commission for both court and city. He and
Rowley co-wrote The World Tossed at Tennis for Prince Charles's
Men to perform at Denmark House for Prince Charles. But it
transferred to the Swan, for the first time successfully bringing
"A Courtly Masque" into commercial playhouses for
popular audiences. Middleton's relationship with Charles in
Tennis reflected the domestic and foreign policy problems
created by the outbreak of the Thirty Years War; those issues
profoundly affected his work in the 1620s, through the celebration
of the White Knight in A Game at Chess to the disappointments
of 1626-7.
While collaborating with Rowley for Charles,
Middleton was composing for Mayor William Cokayne whose inaugural
pageant he had written and produced six months before the
first of his ten Honourable Entertainments (Apr 1620-Apr 1621).
His appointment as the first salaried City Chronologer (6
Sep 1620) transformed his status, and prompted much of his
subsequent work: his lost manuscript Annals (1620+), four
more Mayors' pageants, various occasional poems and entertainments,
and his lost manuscript Farrago (describing political events,
1625-27). What Jonson was for Jacobean court masques, Middleton
was for Jacobean civic revelry: its dominant, and most inventive,
practitioner. Unlike Jonson, he was also an historian.
Meanwhile, he kept writing successful plays,
alone and in collaboration. Women Beware Women probably belongs
to 1621; "Never came Tragedy off with more applause",
playwright Nathaniel Richard testified in 1657. In late 1621
or early 1622 Middleton re-joined Webster to produce Anything
for a Quiet Life for the King's Men. By 7 May 1622 he and
Rowley had finished The Changeling, performed by William Beeston's
company at the Phoenix; its title does not signal genre, and
although since the 19th century it has been recognized as
a tragic masterpiece, in the 17th it was most often remembered
for its comic scenes. The Nice Valour (Sep 1622?) contains
the period's most popular theatrical song (the beautifully
melancholy "Hence all ye vain delights"); a Prologue
written for a posthumous revival explains that Middleton hated
writing prologues "to a Play well made", and claims
that "our Poet ever writ Language so good, mixt with
such sprightly wit, He made the Theatre so soveraigne With
his rare scenes . . ." For The Spanish Gypsy (9 Jul 1623),
Middleton teamed with Rowley, his old partner Dekker, and
Dekker's new partner John Ford; performed at the Phoenix,
and also at court (Nov 5, for Prince Charles), the play was
so popular that it provoked contempt or envy for its "Gipsie
Iigges" and "other Trumpery" (Steen 39).
Middleton's greatest theatrical triumph was
also his last. The King's Men performed A Game at Chess at
the Globe for an unprecedented nine consecutive days (5-14
Aug 1624) before it was closed by the Privy Council after
the Spanish ambassador complained. The biggest box-office
success and most talked-about dramatic work of its era, Middleton's
modern history play survives in more manuscripts than any
other play, and was the first single play printed with engraved
title-pages. It is sui generis: an allegorical representation
of English history in the 1620s and of the origin of modern
party politics, a work of astonishing originality in conception,
executed with an unsurpassed verbal and theatrical command.
Accounts of it were dispatched to Brussels, The Hague, Madrid,
Florence, Rome, and Venice. Middleton went into hiding, pursued
by a warrant; his son Edward was arrested and brought before
the Privy Council; Middleton himself claims, in a poem to
King James, that he was imprisoned "in the Fleet".
None of his extant plays can be convincingly dated after Aug
1624, and he was probably released on condition that he stop
writing for the stage.
His relationship with the City of London also
deteriorated, perhaps because he was sick or depressed. Plague
prevented a Lord Mayor's show in 1625. He and his usual partner
Garrett Christmas were employed to prepare London's official
coronation pageant, but what plague delayed was finally aborted
by royal indisposition. In Jan 1626 the Court of Aldermen
received complaints "of abuses and badd workmanshipp
in and about the contrivings and payntings of the pagents"
(Rep. 40, f. 84). On 1 Feb, the Common Council resolved to
end Middleton's annual salary (of L10) "unless he give
this Court satisfaction according as was intended he should
do when the said pension was first granted him" (Rep.
41, f. 216-219). On 25 May the Earl of Pembroke ordered the
Lord Mayor to "remove the said Pageants" (Remembrancia,
vi.86); in June, the Aldermen ruled that "noe further
moneys" be paid to Middleton and Garrett for the three
Coronation pageants (Rep. 40, f. 256). The Drapers' Company
commissioned Middleton and Garrett to produce the 1626 Lord
Mayor's show, but on 31 Dec they complained to the Court of
Assistants that they had not been paid by the Drapers, who
replied that payment had been "putt of<f> in regarde
of the ill performance" of the pageant (Robertson, 110);
in the end the two were paid, at an unspecified date, L25
(17%) less than in 1623.
Middleton was writing till the end. His (lost)
Farrago included an account of "Habeas Corpus 1627"
(Oldys); the opening rounds of the historic Five Knights Case
began in late June 1627. On 4 July Middleton was buried in
St Mary's churchyard, Newington. His impoverished widow survived
him by only a year. |
