Middleton and his Collaborators

Middleton and his Collaborators explores the career of one of the most prominent and versatile writers of the early seventeenth century. Throughout his working life Thomas Middleton worked in collaboration with several contemporaries notably Thomas Dekker, William Shakespeare, and William Rowley. The book devotes chapters to each, and examines in detail Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, his intertextual relations with Shakespeare, and arguably his masterpiece, The Changeling, written with Rowley. Collaboration is not merely a ‘detail’, however, but a structuring principle in the making of theatre during this period, and it is central to an understanding of Middleton drama. This is the first study of Middleton to emphasise the significance of his collaborative relationships, and stresses in turn the intertextual elements of the plays, pageants, poems, and pamphlets. The portrait that emerges is a politicised, theatrically-aware, multi-faceted writer whose chief skill lay in his ability to work in and across a range of genres, as his collaborative relationships and sole works alike demonstrate.