An illuminating study of all works in the newly enlarged Middleton canon, placing them in personal, national, international and theatrical contexts.

Thomas Middleton's notorious play, A Game at Chess, provoked a scandal when it was first performed in 1624. Through a masterly use of the metaphor of chessplay,

Ward was in a New York banking family, brother of Julia Ward Howe, married into the Astor family, was in the Gold Rush, involved in the social life of New York

One of the great Renaissance playwrights, Middleton wrote tragedies essentially different from either Marlowe's or Shakespeare's, being wittier than the former

The Changeling is a popular Renaissance tragedy in which the relationship between money, sex, and power is explored. Frequently performed and studied in Univers