Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/373

 James first heard of the matter from the Spanish ambassador, who complained of a ‘very scandalous comedy acted publickly by the king's players,’ in which they brought on the stage ‘in a rude and dishonourable fashion’ both the two kings themselves and Gondomar, the ambassador's predecessor, who had returned to Spain in 1622. James at once took action, and on 12 Aug. sent, through Secretary Conway, an indignant letter to the privy council requiring them to immediately summon and punish the poet and the actors. On 21 Aug. the lords replied that the players on appearing before them had produced an ‘original and perfect copy’ of the play duly ‘seen and allowed’ by the master of the revels, Sir H. Herbert. The players were accordingly dismissed with a ‘round and sharp reproof,’ but forbidden to act any play whatever until the king's pleasure were known, and bound over in 300l. bonds to appear when called for. Middleton himself did not obey the summons. The lords informed the king that the poet was ‘one Middleton who, shifting out of the way, and not attending the Board as was expected, we have given warrant to a messenger for the apprehending of him.’ The search was apparently not at once successful, and on 27 Aug. a warrant was issued to bring Middleton's son Edward, a youth of twenty, before the board. On 30 Aug. he accordingly appeared and his indemnity was formally recognised. A tradition, preserved in a manuscript note by a contemporary hand in Dyce's copy of the play, records that Middleton himself was ‘committed to prisson, where hee lay some Tyme, and at last gott oute upon this petition presented to King James’—(six verses follow); but as the ‘chief actors’ are said to have been likewise imprisoned, which the official documents show was not the case, this statement cannot be relied on. Moreover, the king's resentment had rapidly cooled, and already on 27 Aug. the lord chamberlain wrote to the lord president of the council intimating that ‘in consideration of those his poor servants, his Majesty would have their Lordships connive at any common play lycensed by authority, that they shall act as before.’ The lords were, it is true, directed to proceed with their investigations into ‘the originall roote of this offence;’ but it is evident that the inquiry was now little more than academic, and Middleton's punishment, if he suffered any, was probably trivial.

Of the remaining three years of Middleton's life we know only that he wrote in 1626 one more pageant, ‘The Triumphes of Health and Prosperity.’ At Midsummer 1627 he died, probably in his house at Newington Butts, where he had lived at least four years. He was buried, according to the register of the parish church, on 4 July. Middleton married (according to pedigree in ‘Visitation of Surrey,’ 1623) Mary, daughter of Edward Morbeck of London, one of the six clerks of chancery, by whom he had one son, Edward, born 1604. She probably died before 1627, and Middleton married again. His second wife, Magdalen, survived him, and applied in the February after his death to the city for pecuniary aid, and received twenty nobles. She is possibly the ‘Mrs. Midleton’ who was buried at Newington Butts on 18 July 1628.

Of Middleton's relations to his fellow-dramatists little is known. He collaborated repeatedly with Thomas Dekker [q. v.] and with William Rowley [q. v.], in his apprentice days also with Drayton, Webster, and Anthony Munday [q. v.] To Webster's ‘Duchess of Malfi’ he contributed complimentary verses (1623); but he does not seem to have been highly regarded by his fellow-authors. Jonson not only alluded publicly to ‘A Game at Chess’ as a ‘poor … play’ (Staple of News, iii. 1), but spoke of Middleton himself to Drummond as a ‘base fellow’ (Conversations, § 11). Unlike his successor, Jonson, Middleton evidently gave high satisfaction in his function of ‘city chronologer,’ and his pageants were admired by his city patrons. He seems also to have been popular with the playgoing public both before and after the civil wars. None of his pieces is known to have failed on the stage. But before the revolution he had fallen, in common with all but one or two of his dramatic contemporaries, into a neglect from which he has been among the last to recover. This is partly due to his striking inequality. A facile and inventive writer, he could turn out an abundance of sufficiently effective work with little effort; but he had little sustained inspiration; he is very great only in single scenes. He is rather prone to repeat motives (e.g. the ‘Mayor of Quinborough,’ ‘A Mad World,’ and the ‘Spanish Gipsy,’ all contain variations of the play within the play); in his earlier plays the same stock types incessantly reappear, and many of them are not only gross but dull. Yet even here he habitually shows keen observation of the London world he knew, and of which he is, on the whole, the most veracious painter, avoiding both the airy extravagance of Dekker and the laborious allusiveness of Jonson. His later plays show more concentrated as well as more versatile power. His habitual occupation