This volume contains Thomas Middletons four greatest plays, "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside," "Women Beware Women," "The Changeling," and "A Game at Chess." "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside" is the most complex and effective of the city comedies. "Women Beware Women" and "The Changeling" (with William Rowley) are two of the most powerful Jacobean tragedies aside from Shakespeare, studies in lust, power, violence, and self-delusive psychology. "A Game at Chess" was the single most popular play of the whole Shakespearean era, a satirical expose of Jesuit plotting and Anglo-Spanish politics which played...

This excellent volume brings together four of the most popular, most frequently studied and performed comedies that depict city life, by Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson and their contemporaries. Included are The Roaring Girl, The Shoemaker's Holiday, Eastward Ho , and Every Man in His Humour. The text is freshly edited using modern spelling. A critical introduction, a wide-ranging annotation, and an informative bibliography illuminate the plays' cultural contexts and theatrical potential for reader and performer alike.
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