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Thomas Middleton (1580 – July 1627) was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson among the most successful and prolific 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 notable and distinctive of Jacobean dramatists. ==Life== Middleton was born in London and baptised on 18 April 1580. He was the son of a bricklayer who had raised himself to the status of a gentleman and who, interestingly, owned property adjoining the Curtain theatre in Shoreditch. Middleton was just five when his father died and his mother's subsequent remarriage dissolved into a 15-year battle over the inheritance of Thomas and his younger sister – an experience which must have informed and perhaps incited his repeated satire at the expense of the legal profession. Middleton attended Queen’s College, Oxford, matriculating in 1598, but he did not graduate. Before he left Oxford (sometime in 1600 or 1601),〔Mark Eccles, "Thomas Middleton a Poett', "Studies in Philology" 54 (1957): 516–36 (p. 525)〕 he wrote and published three long poems in popular Elizabethan styles. None appears to have been especially successful, and one, his book of satires, ran foul of an Anglican Church ban on verse satire and was burned. Nevertheless, his literary career was launched. In the early 17th century, Middleton made a living writing topical pamphlets, including one – ''Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets'' – that was reprinted several times and became the subject of a parliamentary inquiry. At the same time, records in the diary of Philip Henslowe show that Middleton was writing for the Admiral's Men. Unlike Shakespeare, Middleton remained a free agent, able to write for whichever company hired him. His early dramatic career was marked by controversy. His friendship with Thomas Dekker brought him into conflict with Ben Jonson and George Chapman in the War of the Theatres. The grudge against Jonson continued as late as 1626, when Jonson's play ''The Staple of News'' indulges in a slur on Middleton's great success, ''A Game at Chess''.() It has been argued that Middleton's ''Inner Temple Masque'' (1619) sneers at Jonson (then absent in Scotland) as a "silenced bricklayer." In 1603, Middleton married. In the same year an outbreak of plague forced the theatres in London to close, while James I came to the English throne. These events marked the beginning of Middleton's greatest period as a playwright. Having passed the time during the plague composing prose pamphlets (including a continuation of Thomas Nashe's ''Pierce Penniless''), he returned to drama with great energy, producing almost a score of plays for several companies and in several genres, most notably city comedy and revenge tragedy. He continued his collaborations with Dekker, and the two produced ''The Roaring Girl'', a biography of the contemporary thief Mary Frith. In the 1610s, Middleton began a fruitful collaboration with the actor William Rowley, producing ''Wit at Several Weapons'' and ''A Fair Quarrel''. Working alone he produced his comic masterpiece, ''A Chaste Maid in Cheapside'', in 1613. His own plays from this decade reveal a somewhat mellowed temper. Certainly there is no comedy among them with the satirical depth of ''Michaelmas Term'' and no tragedy as bloodthirsty as ''The Revenger's Tragedy''. Middleton was also branching out in other dramatic directions: he was apparently called on to help revise ''Macbeth'' and ''Measure for Measure'', and at the same time be increasingly involved with civic pageants. This last connection was made official in 1620, when he was appointed city chronologer of the City of London. He held this post until his death in 1627, when it passed to Jonson. Middleton's official duties did not interrupt his dramatic writing; the 1620s saw the production of his and Rowley's tragedy ''The Changeling'', and of several tragicomedies. In 1624, he reached a peak of notoriety when his dramatic allegory ''A Game at Chess'' was staged by the King's Men. The play used the conceit of a chess game to present and satirise the recent intrigues surrounding the Spanish Match. Though Middleton's approach was strongly patriotic, the Privy Council silenced the play after nine performances, having received a complaint from the Spanish ambassador. Middleton faced an unknown, probably frightening degree of punishment. Since no play later than ''A Game at Chess'' is recorded, it has been suggested that this included a ban on writing for the stage. Middleton died at his home at Newington Butts in Southwark in 1627, and was buried on 4 July in St Mary's churchyard.〔(Thomas Middleton: the Final Decade. Accessed 1 February 2013 )〕 The old church of St Mary's was demolished in 1876 to facilitate road-widening, and its replacement was destroyed in the Second World War and not rebuilt. The old churchyard where Middleton was buried survives as a public park in Elephant and Castle. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Thomas Middleton」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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