Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works

Description

Thomas Middleton is one of the few playwrights in English whose range and brilliance comes close to Shakespeare's. This handsome edition makes all Middleton's work accessible in a single volume, for the first time. It will generate excitement and controversy among all readers of Shakespeare and the English classics.

• First critical edition ever of one of Shakespeare's most important contemporaries
• Includes all Middleton's works in one volume, for the first time
• Provides texts in modern spelling and punctuation, with critical introductions, notes on the page, and many illustrations
• Authoritative texts based on twenty years of original research by an international team of more than 60 leading scholars
• Includes works by major Renaissance playwrights in which Middleton had a hand: including Jonson, Webster, and Shakespeare (Macbeth, Timon of Athens, Measure for Measure)
• Arranges the works in the order in which they are written

About the Author(s)

General editors: Gary Taylor, George Matthew Edgar Professor of English and Director of the program in the History of Text Technologies at Florida State University, and John Lavagnino, Senior Lecturer in Humanities Computing at King's College London

Table of Contents

Alphabetical Contents
Index of Titles by Genre
List of Illustrations
How to Use This Book, Gary Taylor
Thomas Middleton: Lives and Afterlives, Gary Taylor
Middleton's London, Paul S. Seaver
Middleton's Theatres, Scott McMillin
Collected Works 1603-1627
The Phoenix
News from Gravesend: Sent to Nobody
The Nightingale and the Ant; and, Father Hubburd's Tales
The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinary; or, The Walks in Paul's
Plato's Cap cast at the year 1604
The Black Book
The Patient Man and the Honest Whore
The Whole Royal and Magnificent Entertainment Given to King James through the City of LondonThe Patient Man and the Honest Whore
Lost Plays: A Brief Account, Doris Feldmann and Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador
Michaelmas Term
A Trick to Catch the Old One
A Mad World, My Masters
A Yorkshire Tragedy; or, One of the Four Plays in One, called All's One
The Life of Timon of Athens
The Puritan Widow; or, The Puritan; or, The Widow of Watling Street
The Revenger's Tragedy
Your Five Gallants
Sir Robert Sherley his Entertainment in Cracovia
The Two Gates of Salvation; or, The Marriage of the Old and New Testament; or, God's Parliament House
The Bloody Banquet: A Tragedy
The Roaring Girl; or, Moll Cutpurse
No Wit/Help like a Woman's; or, The Almanac
The Lady's Tragedy ['The Second Maiden's Tragedy']: Parallel Texts
A Chaste Maid in Cheapside
The Manner of his Lordship's Entertainment
The Triumphs of Truth
Wit at Several Weapons
Masque of Cupids
More Dissemblers Besides Women
The Widow
The Witch
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Civitatis Amor
A Fair Quarrel
The Triumphs of Honour and Industry
The Owl's Almanac
The Peacemaker; or, Great Britain's Blessing
An/The Old Law
Masque of Heroes; or, The Inner Temple Masque
Hengist, King of Kent; or, The Mayor of Queenborough
The Triumphs of Love and Antiquity
The World Tossed at Tennis [A Courtly Masque]
Honourable Entertainments and An Invention
Women, Beware Women: A Tragedy
The Sun in Aries
Measure for Measure
Anything for a Quiet Life
The Changeling
The Nice Valour; or, The Passionate Madman
The Triumphs of Honour and Virtue
The Spanish Gypsy
The Triumphs of Integrity with The Triumphs of the Golden Fleece
A Game at Chesse: An Early Form
A Game at Chess: A Later Form
Occasional Poems, 1619-25
Lost Pageant for Charles I: A Brief Account, Gary Taylor
The Triumphs of Health and Prosperity
Lost Political Prose, 1620-7: A Brief Account, Thomas Cogswell
Juvenilia 1597-1602
The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased
Microcynicon: Six Snarling Satires
The Ghost of Lucrece
The Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets

Reviews

Review from previous edition The Collected Works is, of course a prodigious achievement that only someone with Taylor's infectious energy and obsessive determination could have brought off. - Michael Neill, London Review of Books

fine introductory essays - Plays International

The Oxford Middleton is a monumental achievement. Gary Taylor and his team of scholars have managed to do for Thomas Middleton what Heminges and Condell did for Shakespeare in the 1623 First Folio: they've collected a great playwright's work in a landmark edition, one that enables us to appreciate afresh an extraordinary literary career. Taken together, The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton and its companion volume Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, provide an essential guide to matters at the heart of the English literary world in the early seventeenth century, from authorship and collaboration to censorship, civic pageantry, and the London book trade. - James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare and Professor of English, Columbia University

a monumental work of scholarship - Jonathan Bate, Times Literary Supplement

It is not, I think, overstating the case to say that the release of this edition feels epochal, and the sense of recognition at what it has added, as well as what it will inspire over the ensuing decades, is already palpable. The Oxford Middleton is a truly momentous work, and it is now in the hands of you, the Great Variety of Readers. - Will Sharpe, The Shakespeare Bookshop Newsletter

All of us who care deeply about the history of English drama welcome with great enthusiasm and excitement the publication of the Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, a major achievement in textual scholarship that represents the collective expertise and critical wisdom of scholars from all over the world. Gary Taylor and his many collaborators have given us a new and remarkably versatile Thomas Middleton-a great tragic playwright, a brilliant creator of sly and cynical urban comedies, a thoroughly gifted man of the theater and citizen of London. With this massive collected edition, the history of English drama is much more complete and we can hope for many more professional productions of these neglected plays. - Gail Paster, Director, Folger Shakespeare Library

It is hard to exaggerate the scale of the Oxford Middleton particularly since this is the kind of scholarship which is—in its diversity and eclecticism—designed to open up debate rather than close it off. It is a colossal achievement representing a decisive expansion of Renaissance studies which will percolate throughout scholarship and teaching. But what is, perhaps, most exciting, is that the collection must surely generate a rediscovery of these eminently stageable plays in the theatre. - Andrew James Hartley, Editor, Shakespeare Bulletin

The publication of The Complete Works of Middleton will be a major event for all those who care about the theatre of Shakespeare's time. The scholarship is meticulous, the commentary is fascinating and the international team of experts displays the field of Renaissance Drama studies at its finest. In modern times, productions of The Changeling and Women Beware Women have shown the dark side of sex and power that Shakespeare touched on but never fully explored. The Complete Works now shows us the full range of Middleton's talent for comedy and social drama and, controversially, the full extent of his collaboration with and development of Shakespeare's plays. - Kathleen E. McLuskie, The Shakespeare Institute

Few editorial projects have been as eagerly anticipated as the Oxford Middleton, which will utterly transform how we understand early modern drama, both in the classroom and in our research. As with Shakespeare, Gary Taylor and his team have set a new gold standard for textual editing and interpretive criticism, leaping from the 19th century to the 21st - finally an edition that captures Middleton's tremendous accomplishments. - Henry Turner, Rutgers University, New Jersey, author of The English Renaissance Stage: Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial Arts, 1580-1630 (Oxford, 2006)

Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works [is] the first time all his play, poems and manuscripts have appeared in a single volume. The timing of this 2,016-page monument couldn't be better. Academic interest in Middleton has burgeoned since the 1900s as scholars have discovered that the more time passes, the more relevant his work becomes. - Jumana Farouky, TIME