Women Beware Women: And Other Plays

by Thomas Middleton, Richard Dutton (Editor)

This volume contains Thomas Middletons four greatest plays, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Women Beware Women, The Changeling, and A Game at Chess/i>. 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 exposé of Jesuit plotting and Anglo-Spanish politics which
played to packed houses at the Globe until King James and his ministers banned it. With the most up-to-date introduction available, this volume offers all the play texts newly edited with richly informative annotation.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Classics, Renaissance, Tragedy, 17th Century, Literature

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Thomas Middleton (1580 – 1627) was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson as among the most successful and prolific of playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period. He was one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in comedy and tragedy. Also a prolific writer of masques and pageants, he remains one of the most noteworthy and distinctive of Jacobean dramatists.

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too often overshadowed by Webster, Women Beware Women is Middleton's great tragedy of sexual transgression and dark desires. Set in an imaginary Florence, this centres on lust as an economic commodity as various characters buy and sell bodies and are themselves bought and sold.

Especially interesting, I think, is Livia, the thirty-nine year old widow with wealth of her own who purchases love in the same way that her male counterparts do.

The heart of the pay lies in the brilliant game of chess scene in act two when the Duke seduces (rapes, in some productions) Bianca while her mother-in-law and Livia play chess beneath them.

Some modern productions flounder with the masque in the last act, but I think this is critical to understanding Middleton's bleak Calvinist moral vision, and to cut it out also removes the essential meaning of this dark and thrilling play.

[Caitlin Costello · Rating 4 out of 5]

a jacobean period piece by Thomas Middleton. Most of his plays involve cunning women, rapist men, lots of sex, and ends in death. this play is about power vs love. power always wins (or loses depending on how you look at the ending).

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a good reason why there isn't a Royal Middleton Company: while these plays are all great fun, none of them have the ambiguity, "gappiness" or depth of Shakespeare's work. The Chaste Maid is a Carry On, fhaar fnaar romp, with every line a double entendre that Kenneth Williams would be proud of, Women Beware Women is a creepy perv-fest, The Changeling (probably the most workable in a modern setting) is a Romeo & Juliet rewrite but with more ick-factor, and A Game at Chess, while historically fascinating, reads strangely in a modern context.

I suspect Middleton, good university educated boy, was just more Conservative than bisexual, taken out of school at fourteen, maybe a bit Catholic Shakespeare, and it shows.

The introduction and notes by Richard Dutton, though, are excellent.

[Marcos Augusto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Women Beware Women tells the story of Bianca, a woman who escapes from her rich home to elope with the poor Leantio. Fearful and insecure, Leantio requires that his mother lock Bianca up while he is away. While she is locked up, the Duke of Florence spots Bianca in a window and attempts to woo her with the help of Livia, a widow. He ultimately rapes Bianca. Bianca becomes deeply cynical, falls out of love with Leantio because of his poverty, and becomes the mistress of the Duke. Hippolito (Livia's brother) is tormented because he is in love with his niece Isabella, who is due to marry the Ward (a foolish and immature heir). Livia tells the younger woman that she is illegitimate (and therefore not related by blood to Hippolito), and Isabella and Hippolito then start an affair.

[James Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant play by Middleton. it is his finest work, and one of the most profoundly disturbing of the Renaissance stage. The plots revolve, sometimes quite dizzily, around the flamboyant but shallow, glamorous but morally bankrupt world of Catholic courts (as imagined by a sceptical Calvinist lest it be forgotten). Love reduced to commodity and trade, with the inherent desires and destruction of innocence by vice, makes this at times a visceral experience. The game of chess/rape double scene is one of the most shocking in all of literature. Deeply disturbing, magnificently wrought- the English stage of the time at its best.

[Sharon Healy-Yang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully dark and bleakly witty. Jacobean plays and classic film noir share so much. I couldn't wait to see how it all turned out. WoW!

[Lulu]

"A Chaste Maid in Cheapside," written c. 1613, Unpublished until 1630. Most scholars believe was first performed between 1611 and 1613.

"Women Beware Women," The date of authorship of the play is deeply uncertain. Scholars have estimated its origin anywhere from 1612 to 1627;[1] 1623–24 has been plausibly suggested. first published in 1657.
No performances of the play in its own era are known.


"The Changeling" Date premiered 1622, published in 1652.

“A Game at Chess." Date premiered 1624

[Virginia Crosbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love Middleton (although Marlowe still holds a prime place in my heart)! Couldn't believe my professor when he said previous classes hated Middleton -- but they were always comparing him to Shakespeare. Middleton's definitely in a class of his own - but still deserves kudos for the amazing plays he wrote! WBW still gotta be my favourite -- it's so deliciously wicked ;)

[Bettie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bettie's Books

[Pol]

'WBW': 19-20 Jul
'Changeling': 21 Jul

Bawdy, and in the case of 'WBW', bloody as well.