Books by Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works and Companion Two Volume Set
Product Description
Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) - "our other Shakespeare" - is the only other Renaissance playwright who created acknowledged masterpieces of both comedy and tragedy; he also wrote the greatest box-office hit of early modern London (the unique history play A Game at Chess). His range extends
beyond these traditional genres to tragicomedies, masques, pageants, pamphlets, epigrams, and Biblical and political commentaries, written alone or in collaboration with Shakespeare, Webster, Dekker, Ford, Heywood, Rowley, and others. Compared by critics to Aristophanes and Ibsen, Racine and Joe
Orton, he has influenced writers as diverse as Aphra Behn and T. S. Eliot. Though repeatedly censored in his own time, he has since come to be particularly admired for his representations of the intertwined pursuits of sex, money, power, and God.
This 2-volume set features the innovative but accessible Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, prepared by more than sixty scholars from a dozen countries, and a comprehensive scholarly companion, Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture. Though closely connected, each volume can be used
independently of the other.
The Collected Works brings together for the first time in a single volume all the works currently attributed to Middleton. It is the first edition of Middleton's works since 1886. The texts are printed in modern spelling and punctuation, with critical introductions and foot-of-the-page
commentaries; they are arranged in chronological order, with a special section of Juvenilia. The volume is introduced by essays on Middleton's life and reputation, on early modern London, and on the varied theatres of the English Renaissance. Extensively illustrated, it incorporates much new
information on Middleton's life, canon, texts, and contexts. A self-consciously "federal edition", The Collected Works applies contemporary theories about the nature of literature and the history of the book to editorial practice.
Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture is not only a companion to The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, which every scholar of Renaissance literature will find indispensable. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the book in early modern Europe.
About the Author
Gary Taylor, George Matthew Edgar Professor of English and Director of the program in the History of Text Technologies at Florida State University, was joint General Editor of Shakespeare's Complete Works (Oxford, 1986; revised 2005). He has written or co-written more than a dozen books, including
Reinventing Shakespeare, Cultural Selection, Castration, and Buying Whiteness. In 2006 he gave the McKenzie lectures in the history of the book at Oxford University.
John Lavagnino studied physics at Harvard University and American literature at Brandeis University, where he wrote his dissertation on Vladimir Nabokov. He has worked in atmospheric science at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and in electronic publishing for numerous organizations. He is
now Senior Lecturer in Humanities Computing at King's College London, and is working on the digital Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700.
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The Roaring Girl: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions)
by Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker
Middleton and Dekker’s comic triumph is as relevant today as when it was first performed in 1611. With its helpful annotations, historical documents on cross dressing and on the colorful Mary Frith (the real-life model for Moll Cutpurse), and wealth of scholarly interpretations, this Norton Critical Edition brings The Roaring Girl to life for today’s reader. This Norton Critical Edition of Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl is based on the text from English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology. It is accompanied by generous explanatory annotations, five illustrations, and a detailed introduction.
“Contexts” is thematically arranged to include almost all known documents from the period concerning Mary Frith (aka Moll Cutpurse), among them records of her court appearances, letters recounting the same, and her last will. Also reprinted are significant passages from her purported 1662 “autobiography,” The Life and Death of Mrs. Mary Frith. While of dubious veracity, the “autobiography” is useful for comparing the play’s portrayal of Moll with later developments in Moll Cutpurse lore, which the Norton Critical Edition traces through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Perhaps most engaging for classroom discussion are substantial excerpts from the 1620 cross-dressing pamphlets―Hic Mulier; or, The Man-Woman and Haec Vir; or, The Womanish Man―which appear in annotated, modern-spelling versions. Together they give insight into how gender-bending trends in clothing, similar to those practiced by Moll, were understood in the early seventeenth century. A related passage from A Sermon of Apparel adds another perspective on cross-dressing practices.
Fourteen critical essays chart the development of scholarly interest in The Roaring Girl, from the first half of the twentieth century, when the play received only passing reference, through the work on city comedy in the 1970s and 1980s, to the explosion of analyses in the late 1980s and 1990s, when the play became a major focus for early modern gender studies. The more recent critical essays move beyond a strict focus on gender and cross-dressing to explore The Roaring Girl’s depiction of other aspects of early modern London, including consumer culture and the contemporary fascination with the language of the criminal underworld. Contributors include, among others, T. S. Eliot, Alexander Leggatt, Mary Beth Rose, Jonathan Dollimore, Jean E. Howard, and Jonathan Gil Harris.
A Selected Bibliography is also included.
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Thomas Middleton: Four Plays: Women Beware Women, The Changeling, The Roaring Girl and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (New Mermaids)
This New Mermaids anthology brings together the four most popular and widely studied of Thomas Middleton's plays - Women Beware Women; The Changeling; The Roaring Girl and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside - with a new introduction by William Carroll, examining the plays in the context of early modern theatre, culture and politics, as well as their language, characters and themes. On-page commentary notes guide students to a better understanding and combine to make this an indispensable student edition ideal for study and classroom use from A Level upwards.
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Five Revenge Tragedies: The Spanish Tragedy; Hamlet; Antonio's Revenge; The Tragedy of Hoffman; The Reve nger's Tragedy (Penguin Classics)
by William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, John Marston, Thomas Kyd, Henry Chettle
A new, authoritative edition of five classic revenge plays
As the Elizabethan era gave way to the reign of James I, England grappled with corruption within the royal court and widespread religious anxiety. Dramatists responded with morally complex plays of dark wit and violent spectacle, exploring the nature of death, the abuse of power, and vigilante justice. This anthology presents five crucial tragedies of the era collected together for the first time, including Shakespeare's 1603 version of Hamletand Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, a ferocious satire that reflects the mounting disillusionment of the age.
The introduction by Shakespeare scholar Emma Smith explores the political and religious climate behind the plays, as well as their dramatic conventions.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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The Roaring Girl and Other City Comedies (Oxford World's Classics)
by Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, George Chapman, John Marston
This excellent volume brings together four of the most popular, most frequently studied and performed comedies that depict city life, by Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson and their contemporaries. Included are The Roaring Girl, The Shoemaker's Holiday, Eastward Ho!, and Every Man in His Humour. The text is freshly edited using modern spelling. A critical introduction, a wide-ranging annotation, and an informative bibliography illuminate the plays' cultural contexts and theatrical potential for reader and performer alike.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Timon of Athens: The Oxford Shakespeare
by William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton
Timon of Athens is a bitterly intriguing study of a fabulously rich man who wastes his wealth on his friends, and, when he is finally impoverished, learns to despise humanity with a hatred that drives him to his grave. The play's plot structure is schematically clear, and the poetry of Timon's rage is arresting in its savage intensity. Yet readers have often detected loose ends, and the tone of writing is uneven. In his introduction, John Jowett explains how these characteristics arise because the play was written as a collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton. This edition pays full justice to Middleton's presence, explaining how his contribution gave the play its distinctive edge. Readers need to read this play as a dialogue between writers of different temperaments, and this edition is the first to make such a reading possible.
The introduction provides the fullest account of the play's performance history available. The commentary is the most detailed ever to have been published. Appendices include source materials and a listing of major productions worldwide.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies: William Barksted and Lewis Machin: The Insatiate Countess; Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher: The Maid's Tragedy; Thomas ... of Valentinian (Oxford World's Classics)
by Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher, William Barksted, Lewis Machin, Francis Beaumont
Product Description Jacobean Tragedy explores the tensions between the disruptive energies of sex and seventeenth century social, cultural and political values with an exceptional frankness, and the plays collected in this volume demonstrate the genre at its most sinister and explicit. The plays included are TheInsatiate Countess, The Maid's Tragedy, The Maiden's Tragedy, and The Tragedy of Valentinian.About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expertintroductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. About the Author Martin Wiggins is Fellow of The Shakespeare Institute and Lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham.
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