Thomas Middleton

20 Mar, 2025 820 English and Old English literatures

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most energetic, varied and innovative playwrights of his time. Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) worked across the London stages both alone and with others from Dekker and Rowley to Shakespeare and more. Middleton’s range included raucous city comedies such as A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and chilling revenge tragedies like The Changeling and The Revenger’s Tragedy, some with the main adult companies and some with child actors playing the scheming adults. Middleton seemed to be everywhere on the Jacobean stage, mixing warmth and cruelty amid laughter and horror, and even Macbeth’s witches may be substantially his work.

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Guests

  • Professor Emma Smith 7 episodes
    Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford
  • Professor Lucy Munro No other episodes
    Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at Kings College London
  • Professor Michelle O'Callaghan No other episodes
    Professor of Early Modern Literature at the University of Reading

Reading list

  • Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton
    Swapan Chakravorty (Clarendon Press, 1996) Google Books →
  • Thomas Middleton in Context
    Suzanne Gossett (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2011) Google Books →
  • Three Jacobean Revenge Tragedies: A Selection of Critical Essays
    R.V. Holdsworth (ed.) (Macmillan, 1990)
  • Middleton and His Collaborators
    Mark Hutchings and A. A. Bromham (Northcote House, 2007) Google Books →
  • The Changeling: The State of Play
    Gordon McMullan and Kelly Stage (eds.) (The Arden Shakespeare, 2022) Google Books →
  • Shakespeare in the Theatre: The King's Men
    Lucy Munro (The Arden Shakespeare, 2020) Google Books →
  • Middleton & Rowley: Forms of Collaboration in the Jacobean Playhouse
    David Nicol (University of Toronto Press, 2012) Google Books →
  • Thomas Middleton: Renaissance Dramatist
    Michelle O'Callaghan (Edinburgh University Press, 2009) Google Books →
  • The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton
    Gary Taylor and Trish Thomas Henley (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2012) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m002908z

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002908z

Auto-category: 822.3 (English drama - 1500-1700)