SOURCE: "Thomas Middleton," in The Jacobean Drama: An Interpretation, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1958, pp. 128-52.

The following survey of Middleton's works attributes to the dramatist a wide range of skills from comedic to tragic, as well as psychological penetration and clarity of vision.

'A great observer of human nature, without fear, without sentiment, without prejudice, without personality.' This estimate by a contemporary [in the Times Literary Supplement, 30 June 1927] sums up a quality that most modern readers of Middleton are aware of sooner or later, a quality inseparable from the rapid, unselfconscious sureness of his work. A wide and keen observer, he covered a range of mood and material only equalled by Shakespeare among his contemporaries and, like him again, could so identify himself with any given mood or matter as to make it his own and proper to him. No one ever explains a failure of Middleton's on...