Michaelmas Term
by Thomas Middleton
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Michaelmas Term is one of five satiric city comedies that the young playwright Thomas Middleton wrote for the boy players of St Paul's Cathedral, sometime before 1607. Set in a vividly detailed, realistic urban milieu at the start of London's social season, the play comes alive through thecentral contest between Ephestian Quomodo, an ambitious, land-hungry city merchant, and Richard Easy, a naive landowning gallant just arrived in the city. Easy is soon deep in debt and his struggle to show more recoup his debts and reclaim his land from Quomodo takes places against a sharply drawn set ofLondon types - Quomodo's socially and sexually ambitious wife and daughter, the Scottish upstart Andrew Lethe, and his mistress the Country Wench, eager to exchange her virginity for an elegant new wardrobe. With its witty, bawdy dialogue and complex gulling action, the play offers an unusually cynical assessment of the social and familial displacements, and of the alienation and loss of cultural memory, so characteristic of life in the great metropolis of early modern London. In this sense, the play isan early satiric diagnosis of urban modernity. This edition, newly collated and edited, features complete explanations of the play's often bawdy exchanges and the complex stage action of the gulling and secondary plots. It will be invaluable for advanced students of the Middleton canon as well asall those interested in early modern London and its vibrant theatrical culture, especially the tradition of boy choristers as professional actors. show lessTags
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Thomas Middleton, 1580-1627 Middleton wrote in a wide variety of genres and styles, and was a thoroughly professional dramatist. His comedies were generally based on London life but seen through the perspective of Roman comedy, especially those of Plautus. Middleton is a masterful constructor of plots. "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside" (1630) is show more typical of Middleton's interests. It is biting and satirical in tone: the crassness of the willing cuckold Allwit is almost frightening. Middleton was very preoccupied with sexual themes, especially in his tragedies, "The Changeling" (1622), written with William Rowley, and "Women Beware Women" (1621). The portraits of women in these plays are remarkable. Both Beatrice-Joanna in "The Changeling" and Bianca in "Women Beware Women" move swiftly from innocence to corruption, and Livia in "Women Beware Women" is noteworthy as a feminine Machiavelli and manipulator. In his psychological realism and his powerful vision of evil, Middleton resembles Shakespeare. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- English
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- ASINs
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