SEDERI Yearbook ISSN: 1135-7789
[email protected] Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies España TAYLOR, Gary Historicism, presentism and time: Middleton’s The Spanish Gypsy and A Game at Chess SEDERI Yearbook, núm. 18, 2008, pp. 147-170 Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies Valladolid, España Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=333527605008 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative Historicism, presentism and time: Middleton’s The Spanish Gypsy and A Game at Chess Gary TAYLOR Florida State University ABSTRACT Middleton’s last two surviving plays, The Spanish Gypsy (1623) and A Game at Chess (1624), seem to belong to different universes, aesthetically and politically, discouraging any notion of Middleton’s “late style” or “late period.” One was written before, one after, the failure of negotiations for a dynastic marriage that would have united Habsburg and Stuart interests. Analysis and comparison of the two plays challenges the theoretical assumptions about “the temporal constant” in the work both of New Historicist and of Presentist critics. KEYWORDS: Middleton, time, dynastic, ideological, Cervantes Thomas Middleton’s last two surviving plays are both representations of Spain. The Spanish Gypsy and A Game at Chess both include Spanish characters, both contain scenes set in Madrid, both make use of Spanish sources. Both were, as contemporary witnesses testify, great theatrical successes in London; both attracted the attention of the Stuart court.