MIDDLETON, THOMAS (c. 1570-1627), English dra matist, son of William Middleton, was born about 1570, probably in London. He may probably be identified with one of the Thomas Middletons entered at Gray's Inn in 1593 and 1596 respectively. His earliest work was The Wisdom of Solomon paraphrased (1597). He began to write for the stage with The Old Law, in the original draft of which, if it dates from 1599 as is generally supposed, he was certainly not associated with William Rowley and Philip Massinger, although their names appear on the title page of 1656. By 1602 he had become one of Philip Henslowe's established playwrights. The pages of Henslowe's Diary contain notes of plays in which he had a hand, and in the year 1607-1608 he produced six comedies of London life, which he knew as ac curately as Dekker and was content to paint in more realistic colours. In 1613 he devised the pageant for the installation of the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Middleton, and in the same year wrote an entertainment for the opening of the New River in honour of another Middleton. He was frequently employed to celebrate civic occasions, and in 1620 he was made city chronologer, performing the duties of his position with exactness till his death.
At the Globe theatre in 1624 he produced a political play, A Game at Chesse, satirizing the policy of the court, which had just received a rebuff in the matter of the Spanish marriage, the Eng lish and Spanish personages concerned being disguised as the White Knight, the Black King, and so forth. The play was stopped, after nine performances, in consequence of remonstrances from the Spanish ambassador, and the dramatist and the actors were summoned to answer for it. It is doubtful whether Middleton was actually imprisoned, and in any case the king's anger was soon satisfied and the matter allowed to drop, on the plea that the piece had been seen and passed by the master of the revels, Sir Henry Herbert. Middleton died at his house at Newington Butts, and was buried on July 4, 1627.
He worked with various authors, but his happiest collaboration was with William Rowley, this literary partnership being so close that F. G. Fleay (Biog. Chron. of the Drama) treats the dra
matists together. The plays in which the two collaborated are A Fair Quarrel (printed 1617), The World Lost at Tennis (1620), an ingenious masque, The Changeling (acted 1624, printed 1653), and The Spanish Gipsie (acted 1623, printed 1653). The main interest of the Fair Quarrel centres in the mental conflict of Cap tain Ager, the problem being whether he should fight in defence of his mother's honour when he no longer believes his quarrel to be just. The underplot, dealing with Jane, her concealed mar riage, and the physician, which is generally assigned to Rowley, was suggested by a story in Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatommithi. The Changeling is the most powerful of all the plays with which Mid dleton's name is connected. The plot is drawn from the tale of Alsemero and Beatrice-Joanna in Reynolds's Triumphs of God's Reveng against Murther (bk. i., hist. iv.), but the story, black as it is, receives additional horror in Middleton's hands.
With Thomas Dekker he wrote The Roaring Girle, or Moll Cut Purse (i6I0). The frontispiece represents Moll herself in man's attire, indulging in a pipe of tobacco. She was drawn or ideal ized from life, her real name being Mary Frith who was compelled to do penance at St. Paul's Cross in 1612. In the play she is the champion of her sex, and is equally ready with her sword and her wits. Middleton is also credited with a share in Thomas Dekker's Honest Whore (pt. i., 1604). The Witch, first printed in 1778 from a unique ms., now in the Bod leian, has aroused much controversy as to whether Shakespeare borrowed from Middleton or vice versa. The distinction be tween the two conceptions has been finely drawn by Charles Lamb, and the question of borrowing is best solved by sup posing that what is common to the incantations of both plays was a matter of common property. The Mayor of Quinborough, the scene of which is laid in ancient Britain, was published with Middleton's name on the title-page in 1661; it may date from about 1606. One of its editors, Havelock Ellis, thinks the proofs of its authenticity as Middleton's work very slender.