The Works of Thomas Middleton

This gathering of Thomas Middleton's works opens with Alexander Dyce's scholarly dedication, preface, and biography, setting out the rarity of the dramatist's surviving writings and the painstaking research used to recover his life. Drawing on heraldic records, family documents, and literary evidence, Dyce traces Middleton's gentility, parentage, marriage, children, uncertain birthdate, and possible early works, while weighing disputed attributions with careful precision. He then follows Middleton into his dramatic career, where most of his mature talent went to the stage in collaboration as well as solo work, and into the wider world of satirical prose, masques, civic pageants, and courtly entertainments. The collection also highlights Middleton's practical importance to London, especially in the lavish 1617 Triumphs of Honour and Industry, which earned him civic office, fees, gifts, and the title of inventor of entertainments. Its most notorious episode is A Game at Chess, the explosive political satire that mocked Spain, ran to packed houses, and was swiftly suppressed by royal order, triggering Privy Council inquiries, actor examinations, and Middleton's disappearance. The volume closes this biographical record with accounts of his death in 1627, his widow's petition, and the mixed praise of his contemporaries, before turning to the plays themselves, where love, secrecy, wit, and moral conflict drive scenes of tense disguise and forbidden desire. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.