A Yorkshire tragedy

by Thomas Middleton

A Yorkshire Tragedy is an early Jacobean era stage play, a domestic tragedy printed in 1608. The play was originally assigned to William Shakespeare, though the modern critical consensus rejects this attribution, favoring Thomas Middleton.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Classics, Tragedy

40 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1608

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

[Florence Ridley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Glad it was short.

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

This has the saving grace of going by quickly. Eight scenes, a man in debt first beats his wife for not getting her dowry turned into cash for him to gamble away, then stabs her and his children in some kind of madness. The wife, after being herself stabbed and a child stabbed to death in her arms, says "Dearer than all is my poor husband's life." What?

[M.L. Rio · Rating 1 out of 5]

How anyone ever mistook this wreck of a play for the work of Shakespeare I have no idea.

[Bhaswati Sarkar · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate the portrayal of the saintly timid wife to a raging lunatic. how much more of a doormat can one be!

[Chloe · Rating 2 out of 5]

How anyone could read this and see Shakespeare in its syntax is baffling. The Bard didn't deserve his name stolen as a sales strategy.

'O, how damnation can make weak men strong!'

There are some redeeming aspects that carry this play -the interactions between the husband and servant at the climax, its staging of a wife's limited position, and reflecting of the husband's troubled mind in the lines he speaks.

'servant [holding him back]: Were you the devil I would hold you, sir.
husband: Hold me? Presumption! I’ll undo thee for’t.
servant: ’Sblood, you have undone us all, sir.
husband: Tug at thy master?
servant: Tug at a monster.'

Ultimately, this is a Jacobean true crime drama that has (for modern readers) a lot to say about contemporary tastes and society.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gosh, what an extraordinary play.

These days, three women a week are killed by their partners and ex-partners, and this play reminds us it's been going on since at least 1600. What is extra shocking is the way everybody knows the husband is dangerous, and beating up the wife, and all thy can do is say "Back off a bit, mate, be patient" when he's quite clearly he's dangerous. He ends up killing two of his kids, and his traumatised wife still forgives him: whaaaat?

But nobody stops him.

Nobody stops him.

He has gambled away all his wife's money, and his brother's college fund (to the extent his brother is in prison for debt), and he stabs his two children.

Not by Shakespeare, and I suspect not even in its present form by Middleton, this is a pretty shoddy piece of work, though. It comes from nowhere, and goes nowhere.

[Gill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as part of the Shakespeare Institute "Extra Mile" online readathon in the lockdown summer of 2020.


Short and brutal - apparently part of an 'anthology' production of short plays and based on a real case - a father, having run through his money, murders two of his children and severely wounds his wife. Its characters are nearly all 'types' - 'Husband, Wife' etc, but more individual than that implies. Enough modern instances of a depressed parent taking the children with them to make this depressingly believable. Apparently the real individual refused to plead guilty or not guilty, and was pressed to death - which ensured what property he had left was saved and passed to what family he had left. A horrible death, but it's hard to feel sympathy.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I enjoyed the play, I despised the husband character (which I don't think anyone is supposed to - he's a monster) and didn't much like the wife either (but I'm wondering if that is because I'm a woman living in the 21st century). The other characters were entertaining, and I'd like to think this would play out well on stage.

[amax · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, just no. How could anyone think that this was written by Shakespeare? The style, plot, pacing, etc. is completely different from what we know and love about Shakespeare. Middleton was no poet, that’s for sure.

[Joyce · Rating 2 out of 5]

nevermind shakespeare, whose afterlife is flyspotted with people sticking his name where it doesn't belong, what'd middleton (maybe second only to shakes himself in their period) do to deserve tarring with this brush?

[Amilia Garside · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very short yet disturbing read.