THOMAS MIDDLETON (1570?-1627).  Middleton is best known by two great plays, The Changeling[156] and Women Beware Women.  In poetry and diction they are almost worthy at times to rank with Shakespeare’s plays; otherwise, in their sensationalism and unnaturalness they do violence to the moral sense and are repulsive to the modern reader.  Two earlier plays, A Trick to catch the Old One, his best comedy, and A Fair Quarrel, his earliest tragedy, are less mature in thought and expression, but more readable, because they seem to express Middleton’s own idea of the drama rather than that of the corrupt court and playwrights of his later age.

THOMAS HEYWOOD (1580?-1650?).  Heywood’s life, of which we know little in detail, covers the whole period of the Elizabethan drama.  To the glory of that drama he contributed, according to his own statement, the greater part, at least, of nearly two hundred and twenty plays.  It was an enormous amount of work; but he seems to have been animated by the modern literary spirit of following the best market and striking while the financial iron is hot.  Naturally good work was impossible, even to genius, under such circumstances, and few of his plays are now known.  The two best, if the reader would obtain his own idea of Heywood’s undoubted ability, are A Woman killed with Kindness, a pathetic story of domestic life, and The Fair Maid of the West, a melodrama with plenty of fighting of the popular kind.

THOMAS DEKKER (1570-?).  Dekker is in pleasing contrast with most of the dramatists of the time.  All we know of him must be inferred from his works, which show a happy and sunny nature, pleasant and good to meet.  The reader will find the best expression of Dekker’s personality and erratic genius in The Shoemakers’ Holiday, a humorous study of plain working people, and Old Fortunatus, a fairy drama of the wishing hat and no end of money.  Whether intended for children or not, it had the effect of charming the elders far more than the young people, and the play became immensely popular.

MASSINGER, FORD, SHIRLEY.  These three men mark the end of the Elizabethan drama.  Their work, done largely while the struggle was on between the actors and the corrupt court, on one side, and the Puritans on the other, shows a deliberate turning away not only from Puritan standards but from the high ideals of their own art to pander to the corrupt taste of the upper classes.

Philip Massinger (1584-1640) was a dramatic poet of great natural ability; but his plots and situations are usually so strained and artificial that the modern reader finds no interest in them.  In his best comedy, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, he achieved great popularity and gave us one figure, Sir Giles Overreach, which is one of the typical characters of the English stage.  His best plays are The Great Duke of Florence, The Virgin Martyr, and The Maid of Honour.