textbook
Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist Michelle O’Callaghan
March 2009 Pb ◦ 978 0 7486 2781 3 ◦ £15.99 192pp ◦ 216 x 138 mm 7 b&w illustrations Hb ◦ 978 0 7486 2780 6 ◦ £50.00
Introduces Thomas Middleton via his treatment of sexuality, morality and politics, as well as his stagecraft
Description The Author This book analyses how each of Middleton’s plays work in terms of the Michelle O’Callaghan is Reader early modern theatre and dramatic genres, and explores the broader in Early Modern Literature cultural issues shaping the plays. It introduces critical responses to in the Department of English Middleton’s works and modern performances, demonstrating how and American Literature at the modern critics, producers, dramatists and film makers see Middleton’s University of Reading. She is dark, playful and challenging plays as speaking to our times. the author of The English Wits: Literature and Sociability in Early Key Features Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and • Provides wide coverage of Middleton’s city comedies, tragedies, The ‘Shepheards Nation’: and collaborative plays and readings of The Roaring Girl, Chaste Jacobean Spenserians and early Maid in Cheapside, Revenger’s Tragedy, Women Beware Women, and The Stuart political culture (Oxford Changeling University Press, 2000), and • Uses the most recent edition available, the Oxford Middleton (2007) has published essays on early • Guides the reader through criticism of the plays as well as recent work modern literature and politics, on early modern theatre and culture sociability, travel, and ghosts. • Topical emphasis on Middleton’s stagecraft and on modern adaptations and film versions of his plays Series Renaissance Dramatists Selling Points • Thomas Middleton’s complete works have just been published in a Readership new edition by Oxford University Press creating a ready market for Literary Studies his work (our guide references that edition) • Middleton is popular and widely known as Britain’s ‘other Second year undergraduates Shakespeare’ and upwards, as well as • The other titles in the Renaissance Dramatists series Ben Jonson and postgraduates and lecturers Christopher Marlowe have sold 350 and 370 copies respectively in the taking courses on Renaissance first six months since publication Literature and Drama.
22 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LF tel: +44 (0)131 650 4218, fax: +44 (0)131 662 0053 email: [email protected], website: www.euppublishing.com last amended date: 25/11/2008 textbook
Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist Michelle O’Callaghan
Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1: Life 2: City Comedies: Mad World, My Masters, Michaelmas Term, and A Trick to Catch the Old One 3: Authorship, Collaboration and the London Theatre: Middleton and Dekker, The Roaring Girl 4: Tragicomedy and the City: Chaste Maid in Cheapside and No Wit, No Help Like a Woman 5: The Playwright as Craftsman: Middleton’s Civic Pageants 6: Plotting Revenge: Revenger’s Tragedy and Women Beware Women 7: Partners in Tragedy: Middleton and Rowley, The Changeling 8: Politics and Theatre: A Game at Chess Bibliography
Courses Renaissance Literature Renaissance Drama Jacobean Drama Jacobean Theatre Shakespeare and His Contemporaries Theatre, Gender and Culture in Jacobean London
Middleton is taught at the following universities: University of Birmingham University of East Anglia University of Exeter University of Kent University of Leeds University of London (Birkbeck, QMW, Royal Holloway, King’s College, University College) University of Oxford University of Cambridge University of Reading University of Sheffield University of Warwick Keele University Oxford Brookes University
22 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LF tel: +44 (0)131 650 4218, fax: +44 (0)131 662 0053 email: [email protected], website: www.euppublishing.com last amended date: 25/11/2008