Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture: A Companion to the Collected Works

by Gary Taylor (Editor), John Lavagnino (Editor)

Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture is not only a companion to The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton , which every scholar of Renaissance literature will find indispensable. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the book in early modern Europe.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part, on 'The Culture', situates Middleton within an historical and theoretical overview of early modern textual production, reproduction, circulation, and reception. An introductory essay by Gary Taylor ('The Order of Persons') surveys lists of persons written by or connected to Middleton, using the complex relationship between textual and social orders to trace the evolution of textual culture in England during the 'Middleton century' (1580-1679). Ten original essays then focus on Middleton's connections to different aspects of textual culture in that authorship (by MacD. P. Jackson), manuscripts (Harold Love), legal texts (Edward Geiskes), censorship (Richard Burt), printing (Adrian Weiss), visual texts (John Astington), music (Andrew Sabol), stationers and living authors (Cyndia Clegg), posthumous publishing (Maureen Bell), and early readers (John Jowett).

The second part, 'The Texts', supplies the documentation for claims made in the first part. This includes detailed evidence for the canon and chronology of Middleton's works in all genres, greatly extending previous scholarship, and using the latest corpus-based attribution techniques. A full editorial apparatus is supplied for each item in The Collected Works : an Introduction, which summarizes and extends previous scholarship, is followed by textual notes, recording substantive departures from the control-text, variants between early texts, press-variants, discussions of emendations, and (for plays) an exact transcription of all original stage directions. Cross-references make it easy to move between the two volumes.

This authoritative account of the early texts includes some extraordinarily complicated cases, which have never before been systematically 'Hence, all you vain delights' (the most popular song lyric from the Renaissance stage), The Two Gates of Salvation, The Peacemaker, and A Game at Chess (the most complex editorial problem in early modern drama, with eight extant texts and numerous reports of the early performances).

Genres: Reference

1184 pages, Paperback

First published February 9, 2007

About the author

Gary Taylor is George Matthew Edgar Professor of English at Florida State University.

There is more than one author with this name

Reviews

[Robert]

I haven't read this cover to cover. It's divided in to three sections, about the literary culture of the time, the dating and authorship of works attributed to Middleton by the editors and textual notes about e.g. text variants and other detailed editorial matters.

I bought the book because I found, reading the Collected Works this volume is companion to, that I could not dispense with discussion of authorship, especially in cases of collaboration. On that front I have no complaints. The textual notes are not of great interest to me but I have little choice but to accept the editorial decisions made, anyway. The section on cultural aspects of writing and distributing works in the era was a severe disappointment. The essays are clearly best suited to academic journals and use Middleton and his work as examples simply to justify being placed in this volume. I skimmed or skipped most of these 330p of essays, which could have been interesting if written for a general audience in similar vein to the essays introducing the actual Collected Works itself. I'm still using the book along side the Collected Works regarding authorship and general editorial aspects but I'm done with section I.

[Keith]

I certainly won't say that I read this entire opus. It's actually more of a reference book, not meant to be read beginning to end. The book offers some deep background on Thomas Middleton and the "early modern" (i.e., English renaissance, i.e., Elizabethan/Jacobian England) period.

It has some interesting sections on printing, authorship, the state of written materials at the time, music, etc.. They lean toward the more scholarly side, so they're not written in a breezy entertaining manner for the general public, but still very informative.

Over half of this nearly 1200-page brick, however, is additional notes on the plays gathered together for The Collected Works. This includes more history of each play's printing, textual notes, press variants, and lineation notes. I'm fairly interested these kinds of things (comparatively of course), but even this is too much.

If you have The Collected Works, I don't see anything in here that is must read or interpretation changing. I know they were trying to make it affordable, but it's too bad they didn't separate this into two or even three volumes. The size and weight is unmanageable to read. Literally trying to hold it while you read is difficult.

[Diane]

Incredible collection of scholarship on Middleton. As Gary Taylor points out in the introduction to The Collected Works, this is "The First Folio" that Middleton never got in the 17th century. And this compendium is a fantastic resource. Plus - I finally found an essay (by John Astington) on Middleton and print images, which has been ever so helpful to my dissertation - without making me feel redundant.

[Jennifer]

(selected parts, not the whole thing, most likely)