Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist

Renaissance DramatistsSeries Editor, Sean McEvoyAn invaluable resource for all students of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, each volume in the series provides an authoritative and up-to-date survey of a major dramatist's work with a focus on the plays in performance on stage and screen.Each guide provides:* An informative account of the writer's entire dramatic output, with an emphasis on those plays most frequently studied at university, college and school.* Detailed and relevant contextual information on history, culture, politics and biography.* A lucid survey of important recent criticism.* Original critical readings of the major plays.The first four volumes in the series deal with the plays of Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton and John Webster.Thomas Middleton, Renaissance DramatistMichelle O'CallaghanThomas Middleton is one of the major English Renaissance dramatists alongside Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson. His career provides an index to the theatre of his time: he wrote solo and collaboratively, for private and public playhouses, and for the city and the court. Middleton continues to fascinate audiences and readers with his black humour, his wry and witty treatment of sexuality, morality, and politics. He is a consummate professional dramatist, experimenting with stagecraft in a manner that combines the visual and the verbal to startling effect. Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist brings together these aspects of his craft through a detailed study of representative plays across the Middleton canon. Middleton experimented with, and helped to shape, a range of dramatic genres: city comedy, tragicomedy, romance, and revenge tragedy. This new guide analyses in detail how the plays work in terms of the early modern theatre and dramatic genres, as well as elucidating the broader cultural issues shaping the plays. It provides an introduction to critical readings of Middleton's works as well as modern performances, demonstrating how modern critics, producers, dramatists and film makers see Middleton's dark, playful and challenging plays as speaking to our times.Features* Ideal student guide with its wide ranging introduction to Middleton's city comedies, tragedies, and collaborative plays and focus on key texts such as The Roaring Girl, Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Revenger's Tragedy, Women Beware Women, and The Changeling.* Provides background contexts guiding readers through criticism of the plays as well as recent work on early modern theatre and culture.* Topical in its emphasis on Middleton's stagecraft and its assessment of modern adaptations and film versions of his plays.O'Callaghan, Michelle is the author of 'Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist', published 2009 under ISBN 9780748627806 and ISBN 0748627804.