An illuminating study of all works in the newly enlarged Middleton canon, placing them in personal, national, international and theatrical contexts.

Thomas Middleton's notorious play, A Game at Chess, provoked a scandal when it was first performed in 1624. Through a masterly use of the metaphor of chessplay, this satire of men in high places was immediately recognized. The play was performed nine times to large theater audiences before the Privy Council closed the Globe theatre. Numerous contemporary reports and official documents relating to the scandal (printed in the appendix, some for the first time ever), provide a rich content for this fascinating political play. This Revels Plays edition presents a fully-annotated text based on close analysis of the many surviving documents and editions. The play is thoroughly contextualized within contemporary politics and theatrical history.

One of the great Renaissance playwrights, Middleton wrote tragedies essentially different from either Marlowe's or Shakespeare's, being wittier than the former and more grittily ironic than the latter. The genre of 'citizen tragedy' came into its own in the eighteenth century, but Middleton can claim to have created it: Bianca, wife of a middling commercial agent, arouses the lust of the Duke of Florence and becomes his mistress, first secretly, then openly and finally, after her husband has been seduced by the scheming Lady Livia and stabbed by Livia's brother, the Duke's wife. Livia plots her revenge, and the play ends with a banquet and a masque that are a triumph of black farce. Middleton's powerful, psychologically complex female characters and his clear-sighted analysis of misogyny are bound to impress today's audiences, but it is the pervasive irony - cynicism, even - with which he dissects the motivations of both oppressor and victim that makes him so eerily modern.

The Changeling is a popular Renaissance tragedy in which the relationship between money, sex, and power is explored. Frequently performed and studied in University courses, it is a key text in the New Mermaids series.

Ward was in a New York banking family, brother of Julia Ward Howe, married into the Astor family, was in the Gold Rush, involved in the social life of New York and London, and was an epicure. He was also a very powerful lobbying influence on Congress and an author. His family connections and friends were prominent in many fields.

This New Mermaids anthology brings together the four most popular and widely studied of Thomas Middleton's plays - Women Beware Women; The Changeling; The Roaring Girl and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside - with a new introduction by William Carroll, examining the plays in the context of early modern theatre, culture and politics, as well as their language, characters and themes. On-page commentary notes guide students to a better understanding and combine to make this an indispensable student edition ideal for study and classroom use from A Level upwards.

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.

From the dean of Shakespeare studies comes a lively, entertaining work of biography that firmly locates Shakespeare within the hectic, exilarating world in which he lived and worked.Theatre in Shakespeare's day was a growth industry. Everyone knew everyone else, and they all sought to learn, borrow, or steal from one another. Stanley Wells explores the theatre world from behind the scenes, examining how the great actors of the time influenced Shakespeare's work. He writes about the lives and works of the other major writers of the day and discusses Shakespeare's relationships-sometimes collaborative—with each of them. Throughout, Wells shares his vast knowledge of the period, re-creating and celebrating the sheer richness and variety of the social and cultural milieus that gave rise to the greatest writer in our language.

While Shakespeare's popularity has continued to grow, so has the attention paid to the work of his contemporaries. The contributors to this Companion introduce the distinctive drama of these playwrights, from the court comedies of John Lyly to the works of Richard Brome in the Caroline era. With chapters on a wide range of familiar and lesser-known dramatists, including Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Webster, Thomas Middleton and John Ford, this book devotes particular attention to their personal and professional relationships, occupational rivalries and collaborations. Overturning the popular misconception that Shakespeare wrote in isolation, it offers a new perspective on the most impressive body of drama in the history of the English stage.