Thomas Middleton is one of the most noteworthy and distinctive Jacobean dramatists. As a playwright, he was frequently commissioned to write pageants and civic entertainments. Middleton and Shakespeare were the only writers of the English Renaissance who created plays still considered masterpieces in all four major dramatic genres: comedy, history, tragedy, and tragicomedy.
Background
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 fifteen year battle over the inheritance of Thomas and his younger sister: an experience which must surely have informed and perhaps even incited his repeated satirising of the legal profession.
Middleton attended Queen’s College, Oxford, matriculating in 1598, although he did not graduate. Before he left Oxford (sometime in 1600 or 1601), 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 afoul of the Anglican Church's ban on verse satire and was burned. Nevertheless, his literary career was launched....
Education
Middleton entered Queen's College, University of Oxford in 1598, but left university to become an actor and a playwright.. Before he left it (sometime in 1600 or 1601), he wrote and published three long poems in popular Elizabethan styles
Career
In the early 17th century, Middleton made a living writing topical pamphlets, including one "Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets" that enjoyed many reprintings as well as becoming the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry. 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.
In 1603, Middleton married. The same year, an outbreak of plague forced the closing of the theatres in London, and James I assumed 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 close to a score of plays for several companies and in several genres, most notably city comedy and revenge tragedy.
In the 1610s, Middleton began his fruitful collaboration with the actor William Rowley. His own plays from this decade reveal a somewhat mellowed temper. At the same time he was increasingly involved with civic pageants. This last connection was made official when, in 1620, he was appointed City Chronologer of the City of London. He held this post until his death in 1627.
Middleton's official duties did not interrupt his dramatic writings; the 1620s saw the production of his and Rowley's tragedy "The Changeling", and several tragicomedies. In 1624, he reached a pinnacle 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 shut down the play after nine performances on the complaint of the Spanish ambassador. Middleton faced an unknown, but probably frightening, degree of punishment. Since no play later than "A Game at Chess" is recorded, it has been hypothesized that his punishment included a ban on writing for the stage.
Religion
Middleton was raised in a parish dedicated to the reformed religion, and his own Calvinism is evident throughout his career, from "Wisdom of Solomon" to "A Game at Chess". Indeed, Margot Heinemann characterized Middleton as a "Puritan" dramatist (Puritanism and Theatre, 1980). But none of his closest associates was a presbyterian or separatist, and Middleton often satirized Puritans. Calvinism was compatible with a life in the theatre; Puritanism was not. But with the rise of Arminianism under James I, the Calvinism dominant in the English Church in 1580 or even 1609 was forced onto the defensive. In the 1620s Middleton's religious politics became increasingly oppositional, not because he had changed but because the national church and royal family were moving away from Calvinist positions.
Views
What is often noticed is Middleton's apparent moral detachment from his clearly amoral universe. His characters are criticized instead through the plays' sustained dramatic irony, regardless of their social rank