Middleton, Thomas

(?1570-1627)

   He was born in London, the son of prosperous bricklayer, but there is confusion about his date of birth. The DNB and the National Portrait Gallery give 1570, while several others give 1580. He became renowned as a playwright and collaborated with Thomas Dekker (see entry), John Webster and others who wrote for the producer Philip Henslowe. He wrote and produced several lord mayor's pageants and other civic entertainments and in 1620 he was appointed city chronicler. His political satire (1625) A Game at Chess by the King's Players-in which Black King and his men, representing Spain and the Jesuits, are checkmated by the White Knight, Prince Charles (later Charles I)-offended the Spanish king. King James I suppressed further performances. Middleton was buried in the parish church of Newington Butts, Surrey. Some of his plays, from which his poems are derived: Women Beware Women, ?1621. The Changeling, 1622. A Tricke to Catch the Old-one, 1606. The Revenger's Tragedie, 1607. In a Mad World, My Masters, 1694. A Chast Mayd in Cheape-side, 1613. The Honest Whore, 1604 (with Dekker). The Old Law, 1618? (Philip Massinger [see entry] and William Rowley).

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Elizabethan Lyrics. Norman Ault, ed. William Sloane Associates, 1949. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Poets of the English Language, Vol. II. W.H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson, eds. Viking Press, 1950. Songs from the British Drama. Edward Bliss Reed, ed. Yale University Press, 1925. Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Book of Marriage. Helge Rubenstein, ed. Oxford University Press, 1990. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Why Am I Grown So Cold? Poems of the Unknowable, Myra Cohn Livingston, ed. Atheneum, 1982.