This book considers the relationship between the vogue for putting the Ottoman Empire on the English stage and the repertory system that underpinned London playmaking. The sheer visibility of 'the Turk' in plays staged between 1567 and 1642 has tended to be interpreted as registering English attitudes to Islam, as articulating popular perceptions of Anglo-Ottoman relations, and as part of a broader interest in the wider world brought home by travellers, writers, adventurers, merchants, and diplomats. Such reports furnished playwrights with raw material which, fashioned into drama, established 'the Turk' as a fixture in the playhouse. But it was the demand for plays to replenish company repertories to attract London audiences that underpinned playmaking in this period. Thus this remarkable fascination for the Ottoman Empire is best understood as a product of theatre economics and the repertory system, rather than taken directly as a measure of cultural and historical engagement.

This volume offers an accessible and thought-provoking guide to this major Renaissance tragedy, surveying its key themes and evolving critical responses over the course of nearly four centuries. Providing a uniquely detailed and up-to-date account of the play’s rich stage history, it demonstrates how useful Performance Studies is to our understanding of early modern drama, and looks closely at major recent productions on both sides of the Atlantic, notably the 2014 production of the 'Jacobean' indoor space, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in London. In a series of critical essays, the guide offers fresh perspectives on the characters’ mechanical psychology, the influence of Spanish Golden Age literature on Middelton and Rowley, and how the play has been treated on the modern stage and screen. Featuring a guide to digital resources and an annotated bibliography, this collection is a definitive guide to The Changeling.

Middleton and his Collaborators explores the career of one of the most prominent and versatile writers of the early seventeenth century. Throughout his working life Thomas Middleton worked in collaboration with several contemporaries notably Thomas Dekker, William Shakespeare, and William Rowley. The book devotes chapters to each, and examines in detail Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, his intertextual relations with Shakespeare, and arguably his masterpiece, The Changeling, written with Rowley. Collaboration is not merely a ‘detail’, however, but a structuring principle in the making of theatre during this period, and it is central to an understanding of Middleton drama. This is the first study of Middleton to emphasise the significance of his collaborative relationships, and stresses in turn the intertextual elements of the plays, pageants, poems, and pamphlets. The portrait that emerges is a politicised, theatrically-aware, multi-faceted writer whose chief skill lay in his ability to work in and across a range of genres, as his collaborative relationships and sole works alike demonstrate.

This volume offers an accessible and thought-provoking guide to this major Renaissance tragedy, surveying its key themes and evolving critical responses over the course of nearly four centuries. Providing a uniquely detailed and up-to-date account of the play's rich stage history, it demonstrates how useful Performance Studies is to our understanding of early modern drama, and looks closely at major recent productions on both sides of the Atlantic, notably the 2014 production of the 'Jacobean' indoor space, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in London. In a series of critical essays, the guide offers fresh perspectives on the characters' mechanical psychology, the influence of Spanish Golden Age literature on Middelton and Rowley, and how the play has been treated on the modern stage and screen. Featuring a guide to digital resources and an annotated bibliography, this collection is a definitive guide to The Changeling.