6 - Intertextual Middleton

Summary

As we have seen, Middleton drew on and reworked textual motifs in the plays of other dramatists - Hamlet is a notable example. In this chapter we examine intertextuality in further detail. In view of the extensive number of illustrative examples and limited space we concentrate on two examples, one involving a play by John Marston and the other non-dramatic material by the poet Samuel Daniel. Both focus on female characters and debates about women, matters identified earlier as sources of considerable complexity and controversy in the work of Middleton and his collaborators.

We are here concerned not with how writers interact, but with how one text works with another. It may take the form of allusion, when even a single phrase may import a trace of another writer into the text. It may also be a matter of genre, where other plays are invoked through use of conventions, or even by title, as in the case of The Revenger's Tragedy. As the chapter on Middleton and Shakespeare highlighted, we are dealing with performance texts, and it is important to remember that the medium is visual, so the dramatist may draw not only on words, but also on stage images. Similarly, a particular type of scene may evoke memories of other such scenes in other plays, as the wooing scene from Richard III may be recalled in the famous scene between Beatrice and De Flores in The Changeling.

THE DUTCH COURTESAN AND THE CHANGELING

John Marston's The Dutch Courtesan (1604) was originally a Queen's Revels play, as the title page of the 1605 edition indicates. This company combined with the Lady Elizabeth's Men in March 1613, and performed The Changeling in 1622. Marston's play continued to be popular, being revived for the court by the Lady Elizabeth's Men on 25 February 1613, and repeated on 12 December the same year. It also appears, cancelled, on a list of plays, possibly being considered for court performance, on waste paper of the Revels’ office, probably dating from 1619-20, so it may well have been in the repertory in 1622.