New Mermaids
3 primary works • 11 total works
Elizabethan comedy (1599) by Shakespeare's contemporary
Book 2
Thomas Middleton (1580-1627), a bricklayer's son, rose to become one of the most eminent playwrights of the Jacobean period. Along with Ben Johnson he helped shape the dynamic course of drama in Renaissance England. His range is broad, as his work successfully covers comedy, tragedy, and history. Praised during his life as well as today, Middleton remains relevant and influential. The Changeling (1630) was composed with the aid of Middleton's friend William Rowley, also an established playwright. The drama tells of the destructive powers of vice and lust. Beatrice-Joanna is a young woman betrothed to Alonzo de Piracquo, yet Beatrice-Joanna is truly in love with another-the nobleman Alsemero. Beatrice-Joanna uses manipulative and violent means to rid herself of her suitor Alsemero. The ensuing drama results in a catastrophic tragedy, leaving only a few to contemplate justice and passion. The characters, style, and action of The Changeling effortlessly come together, making it one of the greatest tragedies of its time.
Book 26
The central situation of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore is an incestuous love between brother and sister, and it is hardly surprising that critics have differed widely in their interpretation of the exact meaning and significance of the play...All the love affairs in the play end in disaster ...it would even be possible to read the play as a series of warnings against the destructive effects of passion."-from the introduction by N. W. Bawcutt
A hilarious city comedy by the authors of A Mad World, My Masters and The Shoemaker's Holiday. Sebastian has a problem. He's in love with a girl but his father won't agree to their marriage because her family are too poor. In desperation he turns to the one person who can help him, the fearless and feisty 'roaring girl' Moll Cutpurse. In a London fuelled by greed and desire, the charismatic, cross-dressing heroine Moll has the world wrapped around her little finger. Cutting a joyously independent path through the underhand scheming and petty vendettas around her, Moll proves more than a match for any man. This edition of The Roaring Girl was published alongside its RSC revival in 2014.
The Broken Heart is a Caroline era tragedy written by John Ford, and first published in 1633. "The play has long vied with 'Tis Pity She's a Whore as Ford's greatest work...the supreme reach of his genius...."
The date of the play's authorship is uncertain, and is generally placed in the 1625-32 period by scholars. The title page of the first edition states that the play was acted by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre. The text is preceded by the motto "Fide Honor," an anagram for "John Forde," which Ford employs in other of his plays as well. The volume was dedicated to William Lord Craven, Baron of Hampsteed-Marshall.
The date of the play's authorship is uncertain, and is generally placed in the 1625-32 period by scholars. The title page of the first edition states that the play was acted by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre. The text is preceded by the motto "Fide Honor," an anagram for "John Forde," which Ford employs in other of his plays as well. The volume was dedicated to William Lord Craven, Baron of Hampsteed-Marshall.
It is a historical phenomenon that while thousands of women were being burnt as witches in early modern Europe, the English - although there were a few celebrated trials and executions, one of which the play dramatises - were not widely infected by the witch-craze. The stage seems to have provided an outlet for anxieties about witchcraft, as well as an opportunity for public analysis. The Witch of Edmonton (1621) manifests this fundamentally reasonable attitude, with Dekker insisting on justice for the poor and oppressed, Ford providing psychological character studies, and Rowley the clowning. The village community of Edmonton feels threatened by two misfits, Old Mother Sawyer, who has turned to the devil to aid her against her unfeeling neighbours, and Frank, who refuses to marry the woman of his father's choice and ends up murdering her. This edition shows how the play generates sympathy for both and how contemporaries would have responded to its presentation of village life and witchcraft.
Thomas Middleton (1580-1627), a bricklayer's son, rose to become one of the most eminent playwrights of the Jacobean period. Along with Ben Johnson he helped shape the dynamic course of drama in Renaissance England. His range is broad, as his work successfully covers comedy, tragedy, and history. Praised during his life as well as today, Middleton remains relevant and influential. Set in opulent 17th century Italy, "Women Beware Women" (1657) is a dark tragedy in line with the trends of Jacobean drama. It is a tale of violence, malice, and love. The drama that unfolds in this Italian court creates a whirlwind of jealousy-leading to numerous plots of revenge and ultimate tragedy. Along with "The Changeling" (1653), "Women Beware Women" helps to form the apex of Middleton's later career.
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.
This book is intended for students (graduate level and above) of Shakespeare and Renaissance drama, textual and bibliographical problems, and political and social history.
Francis Bacon described revenge as a ‘kind of wild justice’. Then as now, early modern playwrights and their theatre-going public were fascinated by the anarchic energies that a desire for retribution unleashes. Rather than rehearsing familiar conventions, each of these plays presents a unique social and cultural milieu where dark fantasies of revenge are variously played out.
In Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy a grieving father seeks public justice for the murder of his son by envious princelings. When his attempts are thwarted he turns a court spectacle of murder into the ‘real’ thing. Blackly comic in its tone and style, The Revenger’s Tragedy (anon.) presents vengeance as mimetic art, witty and cruel. Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore represents an innovative re-working of the genre as a brother’s love for his sister leads to his spectacular revenge on his rival, her husband, in a society in which brutal retaliation for perceived wrong is the norm. In Webster’s The White Devil crimes of passion ignite revenge in the courts of the Italian city states.
This student edition contains fully annotated, modernized texts of each play together with an introduction discussing the dramatic and poetic style of each play, focusing on its action and play of ideas.
In Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy a grieving father seeks public justice for the murder of his son by envious princelings. When his attempts are thwarted he turns a court spectacle of murder into the ‘real’ thing. Blackly comic in its tone and style, The Revenger’s Tragedy (anon.) presents vengeance as mimetic art, witty and cruel. Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore represents an innovative re-working of the genre as a brother’s love for his sister leads to his spectacular revenge on his rival, her husband, in a society in which brutal retaliation for perceived wrong is the norm. In Webster’s The White Devil crimes of passion ignite revenge in the courts of the Italian city states.
This student edition contains fully annotated, modernized texts of each play together with an introduction discussing the dramatic and poetic style of each play, focusing on its action and play of ideas.
The first fully-fledged example of a revenge tragedy, the genre that became so influential in later Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, The Spanish Tragedy (1589) occupies a very special place in the history of English Renaissance drama. Hieronimo, Knight-Marshal of Spain during its war with Portugal, fails to obtain justice when his son is murdered for courting Bel-Imperia, the Duke of Castile's daughter, and decides to take justice into his own hands...This new student edition has been freshly revised by Professor Andrew Gurr to incorporate the latest stage history and critical interpretations of the play. It also appends the scenes that were added in 1602, discusses Elizabethan attitudes to revenge, the Senecan features of the play and the significance of the Anglo-Spanish conflict in the 1580s.