Product Description
Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) was one of the most prolific and fascinating playwrights of the Jacobean era, producing nearly fifty theatrical pieces in a quarter of a century. This collection comprises five of his most powerful plays, from the comedies satirizing city life, "A Trick to Catch the Old One", and "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside", to his later tragedies "Women Beware Women" and "The Changeling", in which Middleton reveals a world dominated by the corrupting power of lust and subject to the futility of human pretensions. Also included is "The Revenger's Tragedy", originally ascribed to Cyril Tourneur, a Revenge Play infused with sardonic wit and biting irony. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

True dramatic masterpieces from the English Renaissance
This is probably the best available collection of Middleton's wonderful plays. It includes the interesting "city comedies": "A Trick to Catch the Old One" and "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside," which reveal so much about 17th century London culture. The highlight of this collection, however, is undoubtedly the 3 great tragedies "The Revenger's Tragedy," "Women Beware Women" and "The Changeling." Modern movies have nothing on Jacobean drama when it comes to sex and violence. Incest, adultery, murder, and poison are all the order of the day here. The female leads are fascinating psychological studies. These are disturbing plays! Unlike the Oxford editions of Middleton, the editing here never gets in the way of your enjoyment of the text. Footnotes are used to aid with the occasionally unfamiliar language, but they are never obtrusive. The introduction is insightful and interesting. If you like Shakespeare, you will probably enjoy Middleton also. While his poetry is not as consistently sublime as Shakespeare's, Middleton is fully comparable with the other great English Renaissance playwrights Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and John Webster. The only really significant play by Middleton which is missing here is "A Game at Chess," an anti-Catholic satire which is historically fascinating.

Edition well-suited for intermediate academic study
This is a serviceable compilation for the study of Thomas Middleton, a contemporary of Shakespeare who is often compared favorably to the famous bard.

All five plays, which are well-footnoted, are presented without interruption.They are "A Trick to Catch the Old One," "The Revenger's Tragedy," "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside," "Women Beware Women," and "The Changeling."

As a group, I wouldn't necessarily recommend these for pleasure reading. To me, they lack the flair that so many of Shakespeare's works had, and the cultural barriers presented by the intervening ages are sufficient to deter my pleasure.

If you are very comfortable with the language of the period, I think you'd probably find them very well done, but that qualification rules out just about everybody, I suppose.

If you would like to read one just to get a feel for Middleton, I would recommend "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside," which is probably the liveliest of the five.

This edition also has a pleasantly succinct introduction that covers all of the particulars about Middleton in the typical Penguinian manner of brisk efficiency.

You're probably only going to pick this up because you have a teacher who is requiring that you do so. If this is the case, this text is appropriate for intermediate levels of study.

Not too keen on the introduction, but.
First, there's an irritating mistake in the blurb, which says: "'In this play,' T.S. Eliot wrote of Women Beware Women, 'Middleton is surpassed by one Elizabethan alone and that is Shakespoeare.'" First of all, Eliot was writing about The Changeling; and second, he qualified his statement with "in the moral essence of tragedy" and remarked that Middleton's plays were inferior to Webster's great tragedies in poetry and dramatic technique. Another inaccuracy is the Introduction's claim that Middleton received "little approving attention" in the first half of the 20th cent. -- though T.S. Eliot praised him highly both as a comic and a tragic writer (not to mention his repeated praise of The Revenger's Tragedy, which he thought was by Tourneur), and William Empson treated the subplot of the Changeling in Some Versions of Pastoral.

The trouble with the introduction otherwise is that it ignores the verse, the characterisation, the handling of individual scenes -- in short, everything that makes these plays worth reading -- and talks entirely about Themes instead. The development of Middleton's verse style is something that should be mentioned at least in passing in a selection of his plays; and maybe some attention should have been paid to the details of the Middleton-Rowley collaboration in The Changeling.

The plays are well worth reading, though, especially the three tragedies. The comedies have their moments, certainly, but I find them less immediately enjoyable than Jonson's, Shakespeare's or Massinger's.

The top five?
This edition contains what can be argued to be Middleton's most famous plays: A Trick to Catch the Old One, The Revenger's Tragedy, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Women Beware Women, and The Changeling. I always appreciate it when a collection contains "greatest hits" without being interspersed with more obscure works. Penguin Classics also includes a nice introduction.

As for the actual plays, they are classic Renaissance drama. There is plotting, marriage, and revenge. Fans or students of Jonson, Massinger, Marston, and Shakespeare are likely to be interested in these as well. ... Read more

Product Description
Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) - 'our other Shakespeare' - is the only other Renaissance playwright who created lasting masterpieces of both comedy and tragedy; he also wrote the greatest box-office hit of early modern London (the unique history play A Game at Chess ). His range extends beyond these traditional genres to tragicomedies, masques, pageants, pamphlets, epigrams, and Biblical and political commentaries, written alone or in collaboration with Shakespeare, Webster, Dekker, Ford, Heywood, Rowley, and others. Compared by critics to Aristophanes and Ibsen, Racine and Joe Orton, he has influenced writers as diverse as Aphra Behn and T. S. Eliot. Though repeatedly censored in his own time, he has since come to be particularly admired for his representations of the intertwined pursuits of sex, money, power, and God.

The Collected Works brings together for the first time in a single volume all the works currently attributed to Middleton. It is the first edition of Middleton's works since 1886. The texts are printed in modern spelling and punctuation, with critical introductions and foot-of-the-page commentaries; they are arranged in chronological order, with a special section of Juvenilia. The volume is introduced by essays on Middleton's life and reputation, on early modern London, and on the varied theatres of the English Renaissance. Extensively illustrated, it incorporates much new information on Middleton's life, canon, texts, and contexts. A self-consciously 'federal edition', The Collected Works applies contemporary theories about the nature of literature and the history of the book to editorial practice. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Early Modern Drama edited by the best
I was fortunate enough to take a graduate seminar from Dr. Gary Taylor (the editor of this book) when he was working on final drafts of each edited play. We were given copies of individual plays in their next-to-last edited version: the glosses/notes were wonderfully detailed, and the introductions by the various early modern scholars instructive and engaging.

If you enjoy early modern drama, then you would probably find it unthinkable not to have a complete works of Shakespeare. Consider it equally unthinkable to be without this long awaited, wonderfully edited, and brilliantly glossed edition of Middleton's plays. It's about time Middleton got some recognition as one of the best of the early modern dramatists. ... Read more

Product Description
This excellent volume brings together four of the most popular, most frequently studied and performed comedies that depict city life, by Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson and their contemporaries. Included are The Roaring Girl, The Shoemaker's Holiday, Eastward Ho!, and Every Man in His Humour. The text is freshly edited using modern spelling.A critical introduction, a wide-ranging annotation, and an informative bibliography illuminate the plays' cultural contexts and theatrical potential for reader and performer alike. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
This volume contains Thomas Middletons four greatest plays, "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside," "Women Beware Women," "The Changeling," and "A Game at Chess." "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside" is the most complex and effective of the city comedies. "Women Beware Women" and "The Changeling" (with William Rowley) are two of the most powerful Jacobean tragedies aside from Shakespeare, studies in lust, power, violence, and self-delusive psychology. "A Game at Chess" was the single most popular play of the whole Shakespearean era, a satirical expose of Jesuit plotting and Anglo-Spanish politics which played to packed houses at the Globe until King James and his ministers banned it.With the most up-to-date introduction available, this volume offers all the play texts newly edited with richly informative annotation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Neglected Masterpieces
Thomas Middleton is one of the greatest playwrights of the early 17th century, and this is a collection of some of his best works. "Women Beware Women" and "The Changeling" are both devastating tragedies, fully comparable to Christopher Marlowe's and John Webster's greatest works. This collection also includes "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside," a good example of a 17th century London "city comedy." The editors also include a fascinating work of anti-catholic propaganda, "A Game at Chess," an historical allegory. "A Game at Chess" is not widely available, making this collection especially valuable.

The language of the plays is frequently quite difficult, making footnotes absolutely necessary. However, the editors of this work have inexplicably chosen to use endnotes instead of footnotes. This makes reading extremely slow and difficult, since there are 5 to 10 notes per page. For each page the reader must go to the back of the book 5 or 10 times to check the unfamiliar vocabulary, syntax, or sloppy 17th century editing.

For the reader interested in Middleton, there are other choices available, including a penguin collection (entitled FIVE PLAYS) which uses footnotes and includes "The Revenger's Tragedy" and another comedy in addition to the essential tragedies mentioned above. The Norton anthology of ENGLISH RENAISSANCE DRAMA includes Middleton's great tragedies in addition to the important cross-dressing comedy "The Roaring Girl," and also uses the more convenient footnotes.

If you are going to write a review do it right
It's completely understandable if a certain piece of literature isn't suited to your personal tastes but to bash a work that is clearly of literary and historical value without even giving concrete reasons I can only attribute to a gross lack of understanding and general stupidity.

Three of the best Jacobean plays
After Shakespeare and Ben Jonson's best work, the best plays from the Jacobean era are probably:Webster's Duchess of Malfi, Webster's The White Devil, The Revengers' Tragedy, The Changeling, Women Beware Women, and A Game at Chess.The last three are handily present in this volume.

My personal favorite is A Game at Chess, a brutal satire on Catholic conspiracies to subvert England.The reign of James I began with the gunpowder plot - an attempt by catholics to blow up the entire parliament and the king with it - but by the end of his reign James was trying to negotiate for his son to marry a Catholic princess from arch-catholic power Spain.A Game at Chess was written during those latter years in order to rouse sentiment against 'the spanish match', and it got Middleton into some trouble.

What's there to be bored by?
This is a wonderful play; fast, funny and utterly captivating. In my experience I have far preferred Middleton and Marlowe to Shakespeare and this has rejustified my opinion. I have just read this for my university course and if you're whimpering about this at A level I really wouldn't bother going any further with literature, there are far, far worse things out there. The characterisation of Livia is stunning as she changes from well meaning to conniving and sinister to lovelorn and hopeless. The Ward is a dolt and so ridiculous it is hilarious (note the scene where offered Isabella for his wife he checks her as you would do a horse, noting her teeth). Leantio is tragic, let down and hurt by all, to the point of his murder. I would recommend everybody read this book.

A level Boredom
I have been made to read this book for my A level lit class and I would like to express the complete and utter boredom whilst reading this so called brilliant play. I would like to wish all the poor A level students who, like me, are made to read this.

One thing i know is that I better get a good grade for going through this absolute and utter boredom.

If you did enjoy the book then maybe you could explain to me what you found so enjoyable! ... Read more

Product Description
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.
... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1885-86.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Product Description
In Eight Volumes. Contents: The Changeling; The Spanish Gipsy; Women Beware Women; More Dissemblers Besides Women. This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature. ... Read more

Product Description
Sixty quotation puzzles from the pages of The New York Times. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Acrostics
Love these amazing puzzles!A great way to spend time on a rainy day.

Happy Amazon Customer!
My wife was very pleased with this puzzle book from Amazon.

signed,
DeaconJP

New York Times Acrostic Puzzles 9
The book is difficult enough to be interesting but not so difficult that it is frustrating.I am enjoying it

Perfect Solving on the Go!
Whether you're flying, lounging by the pool, stretched out on the couch or riding a bus, this little entertainer is right there for you.
Each puzzle is contained on a single page and the spiral binding folds back on itself to provide a firm, page-size writing surface, so you don't need a lap-table or tray.Puzzles are challenging (after all, it IS theNY Times we're talking about) but a good search engine will prove invaluable.

Challenging Acrostics #9
These puzzles are extremely hard but they are clever and fun to do.I've only been able to do two so far without cheating ie: looking up the answers. They are tricky but I'm getting used to some of the tricks such as realizing that a single letter need not be an "a" or an "i" . And clues can have several different meanings and word forms -what looks like a noun can be a verb etc.For example a recent clue was "single" and I was trying to think of a word for unmarried or a one dollar bill. The answer was "one base hit." ... Read more

Product Description
T. S. Eliot said of the Jacobean dramatist Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) that 'he wrote one tragedy which more than any other play except those of Shakespeare has a profound and permanent moral value and horror': Middleton has increasingly been recognised as one of the most important, if not the most important, Jacobean dramatist after Shakespeare himself. This volume contains The Changeling (of which Eliot gave so high an estimate), together with Middleton's other surviving tragedy, Women Beware Women, his best comedy, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, and a more light-hearted early play, A Mad World, MyMasters. Though Middleton is typical of many university-trained writers of the period who eked out a living in popular entertainment, his work has a cold satiric stance, a grimly determinist flavour and a savage economy which make it unique. He wrote plays for the boys' companies in the early 1600s and later for Shakespeare's own company, the King's Men, but seems never to have established himself as more than a jobbing dramatist. ... Read more

Product Description
Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) - "our other Shakespeare" - is the only other Renaissance playwright who created acknowledged masterpieces of both comedy and tragedy; he also wrote the greatest box-office hit of early modern London (the unique history play A Game at Chess). His range extends beyond these traditional genres to tragicomedies, masques, pageants, pamphlets, epigrams, and Biblical and political commentaries, written alone or in collaboration with Shakespeare, Webster, Dekker, Ford, Heywood, Rowley, and others. Compared by critics to Aristophanes and Ibsen, Racine and Joe Orton, he has influenced writers as diverse as Aphra Behn and T. S. Eliot. Though repeatedly censored in his own time, he has since come to be particularly admired for his representations of the intertwined pursuits of sex, money, power, and God.

This 2-volume set features the innovative but accessible Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, prepared by more than sixty scholars from a dozen countries, and a comprehensive scholarly companion, Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture. Though closely connected, each volume can be used independently of the other.

The Collected Works brings together for the first time in a single volume all the works currently attributed to Middleton. It is the first edition of Middleton's works since 1886. The texts are printed in modern spelling and punctuation, with critical introductions and foot-of-the-page commentaries; they are arranged in chronological order, with a special section of Juvenilia. The volume is introduced by essays on Middleton's life and reputation, on early modern London, and on the varied theatres of the English Renaissance. Extensively illustrated, it incorporates much new information on Middleton's life, canon, texts, and contexts. A self-consciously "federal edition", The Collected Works applies contemporary theories about the nature of literature and the history of the book to editorial practice.

Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture is not only a companion to The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, which every scholar of Renaissance literature will find indispensable. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the book in early modern Europe. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
FRANCISCUS Luna is now big-bellied, and there's room For both of us to ride with Hecate; I'll drag thee up into her silver sphere, And there we'll kick the dog, and beat the bush That barks against the witches of the night. The swift lycanthropi that walks the round, We'll tear their wolvish skins, and save the sheep. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

A Singularly Successful Collaborative Effort -The Changeling
The editor George Walton Williams considers The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley to be a singularly successful collaborative effort. My copy of The Changeling has collected dust on my bookshelf for some years. I was largely unacquainted with Middleton and Rowley and I had assumed that The Changeling was a comedy about "an infant exchanged by fairies for another infant". I was unprepared for deception, lust, and murder.

Middleton and Rowley contributed equal shares to this play. Middleton authored the tragic plot while Rowley created the comic scenes. What makes The Changeling unique is the tight coupling of the comic and tragic story lines.The two plots occasionally intersect, but more importantly Rowley's comic plot echoes and reinforces Middleton's tragic story.The Changeling is a well-integrated, entertaining play.

Williams explains in his excellent introduction that a "changeling" in the Jacobean period had nothing to do with fairies.A changeling was a waverer or fickle person, one without a moral compass. The Dramatis Personae indicates that Antonio, a love-struck fellow that imitated a fool to gain admittance to an asylum to become close to the young wife of an older doctor, was the changeling.And yet, even a cursory reading reveals that the actual changeling was Beatrice, a beautiful young woman that becomes involved in murder and adultery (the order is correct, murder first and adultery later).

The Regents Renaissance Drama Series is a great source for the more significant plays of the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline theater. This series has introduced me to playwrights that would have otherwise remained strangers. The introduction, editing, and footnotes by George Walton Williams for The Changeling are excellent.

One of the best tragedies ever
Anyone who thinks centuries-old tragedies aren't relevant to modern times should read "The Changeling." With a few very minor adjustments, the plot and characters in this play could come right out of a modern crimenovel, or even a modern true-crime story.

This is one of those playswhere you read because you're more interested about what happens to the badguy (and the bad gal) than what happens to the good guys. (Alsemero who! )I envy the performers who get to play DeFlores and Beatrice-Joanna.

A lotof scholarly treatises about the play criticized the humorous subplot,claiming that it had no relevance and no connection to the main plot. Myresponse is, "Hell-o!Is anybody home?" OK, that wasn't ascholarly response, but any scholar who can't see the thematic connection(characters who mask their true natures versus characters in disguise)doesn't deserve a scholarly response.

Anne M. Marble All About Romance

MORALITY, MISUNDERSTOOD; PSYCHOLOGY, ITS MOST DISTURBED
Firstly, thanks to Joost Daadler for his stunning introduction to the edition I read of 'The Changeling'. The in-depth analysis of the psychological disturbances and functions that exist within the play (suchas the ID and the unconscious dropping of the glove, etc.), help expand'The Changeling' into a lot more than just (though this would be no badthing!) a morality play where an orthodox Christian message runspredominant. I have never read a play that reduces the human to the bestialin such an intense and forceful manner, not shying away from the painfuland somewhat humiliating view that human kind are more or less governed bytheir instincts; sexual impulse being one such motivating factor that canrid a human of any intellect ot reason that is supposed to constitute'humanity' in the first place. This ia must read and not just a moral,didactic play either. It is not condemning sexuality but pleading with usthat it must be understood. Overall, it is a tragedy that really challengesits reader into thinking hard about whether certain characters (e.g.Beatrice) can be more sympathised with than maybe one thought upon firstreading. Read it!

The Believability of 'The Changeling'.
'The Changeling' is a play with an extremely complex structure- the plot seems to start off with the potential to develop it's dark themes but becomes preoccupied with the use of coup de theatre; such as the potion andthe grisly deaths. Beatrice is shown in the first scene to understandinnuendo and is able to respond in kind to Alsemero, but is later naive toDe Flores' demands. THIS PLAY IS UNBELIEVABLE AND STUPID!

The Believability of 'The Changeling'.
'The Changeling' is a play with an extremely complex structure- the plot seems to start off with the potential to develop it's dark themes but becomes preoccupied with the use of coup de theatre; such as the potion andthe grisly deaths. Beatrice is shown in the first scene to understandinnuendo and is able to respond in kind to Alsemero, but is later naive toDe Flores' demands. THIS PLAY IS UNBELIEVABLE AND STUPID! ... Read more

Product Description
The creator of crostics for The New York Times and Harper's introduces a dazzling collection of 75 crostic favorites from out-of-print puzzle books. These scintillating brainteasers will challenge even the most skillful crostics fanatics. Spiral-bound. ... Read more

Product Description
In Five Volumes. Now First Collected, With Some Account Of The Author And Notes. ... Read more