Product Description

One of the great Renaissance playwrights, Middleton wrote tragedies essentially different from either Marlowe's or Shakespeare's, being wittier than the former and more grittily ironic than the latter. The genre of 'citizen tragedy' came into its own in the eighteenth century, but Middleton can claim to have created it: Bianca, wife of a middling commercial agent, arouses the lust of the Duke of Florence and becomes his mistress, first secretly, then openly and finally, after her husband has been seduced by the scheming Lady Livia and stabbed by Livia's brother, the Duke's wife. Livia plots her revenge, and the play ends with a banquet and a masque that are a triumph of black farce. Middleton's powerful, psychologically complex female characters and his clear-sighted analysis of misogyny are bound to impress today's audiences, but it is the pervasive irony - cynicism, even - with which he dissects the motivations of both oppressor and victim that makes him so eerily modern.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #323329 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

We're all damned - but we love it!
Middleton was ace, and this play is better than anything by Shakespeare. It is a play for those who see the world as a meat-market, and who can see the cynicism behind the eyes of all self-proclaimed romantics. Middleton sees the human race as a foul and noxious species damned from their births and obsessed only with money, sex and power. 'Women Beware Women' contains not a scrap of hope for any of the characters, and yet despite all that, you love them. Poor Leantio, the humble clerk driven mad with jealous insecurity over his glittering, aristocratic bride; jolly, cynical Livia, the widow who's seen everything, done everything, and has a soft spot for troubled men that drives her to commit hideous crimes; and my favourite, Leantio's cheerfully vulgar Mother, pocketing sweetmeats at Livia's house.

Even better is Middleton's language, beautiful but direct, which punctures all idealism like a jewelled dagger. Shakespeare never wrote anything as satirically harsh as the scenes between Isabella and her revolting fiancee, in which he inspects her teeth, and evaluates her body, in a scintillating attack on the structure of the marriage system, that is still relevant today (except that nowadays, no-one admits it).

This play is fabulous, and is one of the great achievements of the English Renaissance. It's nasty, cutting, and devastating. But you can't deny its truth.