Thomas Middleton (writer)

Thomas Middleton

Thomas Middleton (baptized April 18, 1580 in London , † 1627 in Newington Butts ) was an English writer and poet .

Like John Fletcher and Ben Jonson , he was one of the most successful playwrights of the English Renaissance . Together with William Shakespeare he can be counted among the few playwrights of this time who were as successful in comedy as in tragedy .

biography

Thomas Middleton was born in London . His father died when Middleton was very young, and his mother's second marriage caused a never-ending battle for the inheritance of Thomas and his siblings.

Middleton attended Queen's College in Oxford , but did not graduate there. During his college years from 1598 to 1601, he wrote and published three long poems in the Elizabethan style. None of them became particularly popular and one of them, his "Book of Satires", was even banned and burned by the Anglican Church . Nevertheless, the foundation stone for his literary career was laid.

Around 1600 Thomas Middleton wrote his first well-known piece, which enjoyed great popularity: Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets . As we know from Philip Henslowe's diaries , Middleton was writing for the Admiral's Men around the same time . Unlike Shakespeare , Middleton remained a freelance writer who wrote for those who were willing to pay him.

In 1603 Thomas married Middleton. In the same year the plague broke out in England, which meant that all theaters had to be closed. James I ascended the throne. All of these events mark the beginning of Middleton's greatest creative phase. During this time, pieces such as "City Comedy" ( city comedy ) and "The Revenger's Tragedy" ( the tragedy of the avengers ) were created. He continued his collaboration with Thomas Decker , and together the two produced "The Roaring Girl", a kind of biography of the contemporary thief Mary Firth .

Middleton began his successful collaboration with William Rowley around 1610 ; In 1613 he created his sole work "A chaste maid in cheapside", a comedic masterpiece. His own pieces from that decade reveal a kind of balance. There is no comedy with the satirical depth as in “Michaelmas Term” and also no such bloodthirsty tragedy as “The Revenger's Tragedy”. Middleton also tried other dramaturgical directions of writing. In the twenties he was appointed city chronicler for the city of London. He held this post until his death in 1627, after which Ben Jonson took over .

Middleton's public duties did not prevent him from continuing his dramaturgical work. Also in the twenties Co-Production him and Rowley, the tragedy "The Changeling" was ( Disintegration ) brought to the stage. A few more tragedies followed. Middleton achieved great fame when his allegory "A Game at Chess" was brought to the stage by the King's Men in 1624 . This piece used the idea of ​​a chess game to portray and parody the intrigues of the Spanish court. Although Middleton's intent was strictly patriotic, the king's advisers decided to cancel the play after its ninth performance due to the complaints of the Spanish ambassador. Middleton faced an unknown, but no less worrying, punishment. Since no further piece was known after “A Game at Chess”, it is believed that part of this punishment was that Middleton was no longer allowed to write for the stage.

He died in his home in Newington Butts in 1627.

Works

• with Philip Massinger , William Rowley : The Old Law 1656 (posthumous)
• The Collected Works , ed. by John Lavagnino and Gary Taylor , Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008

Secondary literature

• The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton , ed. by Trish Thomas Henley and Gary Taylor, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-955988-6

Web links

• Literature by and about Thomas Middleton in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Thomas Middleton  in the German Digital Library