Thomas Middleton

Thomas Middleton (1580?-1627), English dramatist, probably born in London, and educated at the University of Oxford. Middleton began writing for the stage in the early 1600s. The plays that exist today were for the most part written in collaboration with Thomas Dekker, Michael Drayton, John Webster, and William Rowley. In 1604 Middleton contributed to Dekker's The Honest Whore and in 1610 worked with him on The Roaring Girle. Middleton's popular A Trick to Catch the Old One (1608) is a cynical comedy about middle-class life in London. His two most powerful plays, The Changeling (1621), written with Rowley, and Women Beware Women, were tragedies about the corruption of character. These two plays have been revived recently, strengthening critical interest in Middleton's work. T.S. Eliot applauded Middleton's political and tragic dramas in his essay on the playwright in 1927. A Game at Chesse (1624) was closed after nine performances because of its anti-Spanish content. Middleton was city chronologer of London (1620-1625?).