First
Writings Marriage and
Maturity Thirty-Something
Final
Decade Personality
and Achievement
That new interest in women
characters explodes in three plays written in 1611. His finest
collaboration with Dekker, The Roaring Girl; or, Moll Cutpurse
for the first time gave Middleton top billing. This proto-feminist
classic put on the Fortune stage a sympathetic impersonation
of a living woman, the determinedly independent cross-dressing
Mary Frith (who also made a cameo appearance, perhaps the
first Englishwoman to perform on the commercial stage). No
Wit/Help like a Woman's premiered at the same theatre a few
months later, and was apparently played at court on 29 Dec;
James Shirley revived it in 1638 in Dublin, and in 1677 it
was adapted (by Aphra Behn, Thomas Betterton, or both). On
31 Oct G. Buc licensed, for the King's Men, an untitled tragedy,
based on Cervantes. Buc misleadingly labelled it "The
Second Maiden's Tragedy"; Collected Works prefers The
Lady's (or Ladies') Tragedy; the complex tragic centrality
of its women, and its influence on Webster's Duchess of Malfi,
are not in doubt. Either Middleton did nothing in 1612, or
what he did is lost. But 1613 was a turning point in his career.
A Chaste Maid in Cheapside is now generally regarded as his
comic masterpiece. It was performed at the Swan in spring
1613, by Lady Elizabeth's amalgamated company, whose many
boy actors enabled Middleton to put eleven speaking female
characters on stage simultaneously. Later in 1613 Wit at Several
Weapons marked Middleton's collaborative debut with William
Rowley, the fat and jolly leading comic actor of Prince Charles'
Men (who merged with Lady Elizabeth's company at about this
time). The jubilantly oversexed London of these 1613 comedies
contrasts remarkably with The Triumphs of Truth, Middleton's
first Lord Mayor's pageant, performed that Oct for his wealthy
namesake, Sir Thomas Middleton. With Dekker in prison for
debt, Middleton beat out Munday for the commission, imagining
the most expensive and elaborate Lord Mayor's pageant ever
produced (described by the Russian ambassador Alexis Ziuzin).
This success in turn led to Middleton's commissions, that
year, for the lost The Masque of Cupids and a brief show celebrating
completion of the New River project. Thus began Middleton's
productive association with the City of London. It was followed
by Civitatis Amor (the City's celebration of the investiture
of Prince Charles, 1616), and two more Lord Mayor's shows
(1617, 1619).
After The Triumphs of Truth, Middleton never
wrote another London comedy on his own, though he did collaborate
with Rowley on one more and with Webster on another. More
Dissemblers Besides Women (1614?) and The Widow (Dec 1615?)
are his first comedies since Honest Whore (1604) to be set
elsewhere; like his tragicomedy The Witch (mid-1615?), they
return to Italy. This change of official residence may have
been prompted in part by his new relationship to the governors
of London, or by the fact that all three were written for
the King's Men (who acted none of his city comedies), but
like all stylistic evolution it probably had multiple causes.
The city comedies for Paul's were all written in his mid-twenties,
with the brilliant surface virtuosity and drive of absolute
youth, in exhilarated command of materials within the narrow
circle of its own ego and experience. From that center Middleton
moved gradually outward, first beyond his own sex, eventually
beyond his own neighbourhood to the larger European world.
He never lost his lewd, ironic, grounded comic genius, but
the later comedies and tragicomedies achieve a wider emotional
range and a more complex orchestration of tones. The Widow
in particular plays the entire keyboard, and was widely admired
from the 17th to 19th centuries. In The Roaring Girl, Middleton
had compared "the fashion of playmaking" to alterations
in apparel: tastes change. After 1614 audiences rejected Jonson's
obdurate city comedies; Middleton stopped writing them.
At about this time, Middleton's sensitivity to the public
pulse was acknowledged by the King's Men. He was apparently
the only playwright trusted by Shakespeare's company to adapt
Shakespeare's plays after his death. In autumn 1616(?) he
updated Macbeth, in part by adapting material from The Witch,
acted earlier that year but perhaps suppressed (because of
its allusions to the Overbury trials). In Oct 1621 he made
alterations to Measure for Measure, changing the setting to
Vienna, adding the song, and expanding Lucio's role.
Rowley and his company provided a theatrical
alternative to the King's Men, and he proved a more flexible
collaborator than Dekker. He moved with Middleton into tragicomedy,
first with their hit A Fair Quarrel (1614-16??), which was
performed at court. There, Middleton's compelling dramatic
exploration and critique of the machismo of duelling may have
led to a commission to write The Peacemaker (1618). Published
anonymously, licensed by James I, that pamphlet rapidly went
through five editions. It echoes the King's enthusiasm for
international peace and hostility to duelling, but links these
to a more general argument for the reformation of manners,
imagining a new man whose masculinity is defined by non-violence.
Middleton and Rowley and Rowley's mentor, Thomas
Heywood next imagined The Old Law (1618-19), a tragicomedy
of euthanasia later adapted by Trollope. It champions the
common law over arbitrary prerogative. As one critic facetiously
suggested in 1885, if "Shakespeare was Bacon, we can
only say that it is quite certain that Middleton was [Edward]
Coke" (Steen 149). Perhaps not coincidentally, Middleton's
Masque of Heroes was performed at the Inner Temple early in
1619 (with Rowley playing Plumporridge). The legal community's
increasing enthusiasm for Saxon precedents may explain Middleton's
turn to fifth-century history for his next play. Performed
by the King's Men, Hengist, King of Kent (1619-20?) is, in
some scenes, a tragic history, which includes a unique and
chilling episode of marital rape. But the play was better
known in the 17th century as The Mayor of Queenborough, the
protagonist of its comic scenes. The confusion over titles
accurately reflects Middleton's challenge to genre. |
