Thomas MiddletonArticle Free Pass Thomas Middleton, (born April?
1580, London, Eng.—died July 4, 1627, Newington Butts, Surrey),
late-Elizabethan dramatist who drew people as he saw them, with
comic gusto or searching irony. By 1600 Middleton had spent two
years at Oxford and had published three books of verse. He
learned to write plays by collaborating with Thomas Dekker, John
Webster, and others for the producer Philip Henslowe. A popular
playwright, he was often commissioned to write and produce lord
mayor’s pageants and other civic entertainments, and in 1620 he
was appointed city chronologer. His chief stage success was A
Game at Chess (1625), in which the Black King and his men,
representing Spain and the Jesuits, are checkmated by the White
Knight, Prince Charles. This political satire drew crowds to the
Globe Theatre until the Spanish ambassador protested and James I
suppressed the play. Middleton’s masterpieces are two tragedies,
Women Beware Women (1621?, published 1657) and The Changeling
(1622, wi