SOURCE: Kistner, A. L. and Kistner, M. K. “The Themes and Structure of A Fair Quarrel.” Tennessee Studies in Literature 23 (1978): 31-46.

In the following essay, the critics examine the thematic and structural elements of Rowley and Middleton's A Fair Quarrel.

In Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's A Fair Quarrel, the conflict between appearance and reality—a motif inherent in nearly all of Middleton's works—passes from its usually subordinate role to dominate the play, providing theme, structure, and unity between the play's plot levels. The central conflict pits value systems that only appear to be valid against the one which, in the playwrights' eyes, is genuinely so. This conflict provides the given situation of the play, and the plot is contrived as action resulting from the collision between people and events as they seem and as they truly are. The ultimate outcome of these conflicts is Middleton and...