Five Plays (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Middleton, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140432191 ISBN 13: 9780140432190

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1988

Synopsis

Thomas Middleton 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.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627), one of the greatest of Jacobean dramatists, was born the son of a well-to-do London bricklayer. He went to Oxford but seems not to have gained a degree. Thereafter he pursued the precarious career of a professional writerin London. In a quarter of a century he wrote, either on his own or in collaboration, nearly fifty plays and other theatrical pieces. His greatest contemporary success was A Game at Chess, which was suppressed by the government.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140432191
• ISBN 13: 9780140432190
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464
• Editor: Loughrey Bryan, Taylor Neil