[Middleton] in which Our Heroine is ambitious (The Phoenix, 1603-04)

[angevin2]

First of all, I wish to squee a bit on the grounds that lareinenoire got me Jonathan Slinger's autograph. He has been the recipient of a lot of transatlantic fangirling from me although I have only seen him in some clips from Richard III on YouTube and one scene in A Knight's Tale in which he has a truly unfortunate medieval mullet; by all accounts, he is a

Comments

[skirmish_of_wit]

I think this makes you and me two of the very few people to read The Phoenix lately. However, I probably missed quite a lot of allusions and references because I read the copy off EEBO.

Alive or dead, Compleate Middleton, I will enjoy thee yet! (Preferably alive, though it would be just like me to linger after death just to finish reading all the stuff I always wanted to get through but never had the chance to.)

Edited after I realized the post was public and not friends-locked.

[angevin2]

*giggle* I have the feeling that my own determination is fueled at least somewhat by a desire to have read a lot of Middleton before it was cool (for narrow values of "cool"), but since I'm reading him out of the new Oxford edition I think I am too late.

And I would hope they had a library in the afterlife! Like in Jo Walton's poem (the last line of which makes me tear up happily). :D

[skirmish_of_wit]

Okay, that? Is amazing. I have never wanted to go to heaven quite so badly.

[liseuse]

It has to be said that I spent a lot of time last year feeling cool because I was using plays not out in easily available new editions, and so spent a lot of my time with the Bullen edition from 1842 or something. Ahead of the game! That's me!

[liseuse]

I like to believe that in Middleton it's all about money and that sex is either a handy side-effect, or a route to the money. I may need it to be this way around for my dissertation to work.

I wholeheartedly approve of this plan. I'd say that I'd join you, but I spend my life reading and re-reading Chaste Maid, A Mad World and A Fair Quarrel at the moment, so I don't think my brain can really stand anymore Middleton. I'll just cheer from the sides!

As for the debate over The Revenger's Tragedy, I'm so not hip on the reasons for its new attribution to Middleton, but I do have a silly anecdote about it. See, I'd been reading Tam Lin, which obviously makes copious reference to it, and I went to see my undergraduate diss supervisor, we were chatting and I make mention of Tourneur's Revengers and she gets this *look* which makes me quail. I stutter to a stop, and she interjects, none too kindly for she has the tersest manner known to mankind, and goes "it's thought to be by Middleton these days" (with a side-intonation of fool) and I

[angevin2]

The Revels student edition (which is the one I first read it from) attributes it to "Middleton/Tourneur" (OTP! Theirloveissovengeful!), which is kind of wimpy. I had it listed as by Middleton on my exam reading list, and my old supervisor said I should list it as Tourneur, because Middleton has enough plays to his name already. I haven't got a dog in the fight though. I sympathize with your anecdote, though! :o

The Oxford editors -- I forget who did the intro/annotations for RT and it is a testament to how enormous the book is that I'm thinking of looking it up as a lot of work even though it is sitting right next to me on my desk -- talk a lot about how the morality (or lack thereof) of RT is more in keeping with Middleton than Tourneur, but I am not qualified to speak to that either.

[liseuse]

Luckily I had mine open and next to me on the desk, the editor for RT was MacDonald P. Jackson. I haven't read any Tourneur besides RT (which, y'know, isn't) so I can't really answer, but I am tempted to say that amorality and immorality are kind of the bread and butter of Middleton, so maybe?

[angevin2]

Ah yes, Macdonald Jackson, my current nemesis!

...well, okay, not really, but he did write the most in-depth argument for Woodstock being a Jacobean play, about which I have complained a lot, since the idea is actually really interesting, but it also wrecks my chapter on Woodstock, so I would rather his view not become the prevailing one.

[oursin]

I thought I'd seen more Middleton on stage than I have - but he clearly wrote a lot that doesn't seem to get produced even in rooms over pubs miles from a Tube station, and I've seen some really obscure Jacobean/Restoration/etc plays in such locales. I've certainly seen The Changeling and Women Beware Women, and partner claimed recently that we'd seen A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, which has faded completely from memory if so (but he has been known to get titles confused). In which case, I've actually seen more plays by Marston.

Middleton and Angevin

[executrix]

It's like Julia and Julia, only with less cooking!

I was going to post about watching The Changeling (the Mirren one from Netflix) and make some snarky comment about never having seen it before, but then who has? And then I realized that because of you I'm in contact with *lots* of people who have seen, like, eight productions of it.

Re: Middleton and Angevin

[angevin2]

Oh man, that's on Netflix? *immediately adds to queue*

I have actually never seen The Changeling performed, myself, but people who live in places with a lot of indie theaters willing to do non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama certainly have; it's one of the better known of the Jacobean corpus (outside of Shakespeare and Jonson, I guess).

Re: Middleton and Angevin

[executrix]

It's got two juicy scenery-chewing roles (actually, I can see the New Burbage doing it, and Ellen being a thoroughly out-of-her-league Beatrice-Joanna) and you don't have to be Darren Nichols to be unable to resist the siren song of a canonical masque of lunatics, so I can see why it would be. And I think it would be a lot cheaper to stage than The Revenger's Tragedy because that's literally all over the place.

[so_lily_briscoe]

I approve of this project! Wholeheartedly. I've read very little Middleton, so. Yay.

[liseuse]

I have done the Middleton dance so many times today.