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The works of Thomas Middleton, Volume 1 (of 5) cover

The works of Thomas Middleton, Volume 1 (of 5)

Chapter 26: THE OLD LAW.
By Thomas Middleton
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About This Book

A collected edition gathers the surviving dramatic and miscellaneous writings of Thomas Middleton with a learned prefatory memoir and editorial apparatus by Alexander Dyce. It reproduces plays, occasional poems, paraphrases, and several collaborative or fragmentary pieces, accompanied by corrected texts, endnotes, addenda, and a transcriber’s note explaining editorial interventions. The editor supplies biographical material, documentary extracts, and textual commentary that situates rare quartos and manuscript sources. The arrangement emphasizes completeness and scholarly annotation to support reading and study rather than a curated selection.

THE OLD LAW.

The Excellent Comedy, called The Old Law, or A new way to please you.

By {Phil. Massinger.
Tho. Middleton.
William Rowley.

Acted before the King and Queene at Salisbury House, and at severall other places, with great Applause. Together with an exact and perfect Catalogue of all the Playes, with the Authors Names, and what are Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Pastoralls, Masks, Interludes, more exactly Printed then ever before. London, Printed for Edward Archer, at the signe of the Adam and Eve, in Little Britaine. 1656. 4to.

Steevens (Malone’s Shakespeare, by Boswell, ii. 425.) remarks, that this drama was acted in 1599, founding the statement most probably on a passage in Act iii. Sc. 1., where the Clerk having read from the church-book, “Agatha, the daughter of Pollux—born in an. 1540,” adds, “and now ’tis 99.” From similar notices in several other old dramas, the periods at which they were first produced have been clearly ascertained; and Gifford (Introd. to Massinger, p. lv. 2d ed.) inclines to believe that The Old Law was really first acted in 1599, and that Massinger (who was then only in the fifteenth year of his age) was employed, at a subsequent period, to alter or to add a few scenes to the play. What portion of it was written by Middleton cannot be determined.

The 4to. abounds in the grossest typographical errors. I have followed, except in some trifling particulars, the text of Gifford, who published The Old Law in the ivth vol. of his Massinger.

“There is an exquisiteness of moral sensibility, making one to gush out tears of delight, and a poetical strangeness in all the improbable circumstances of this wild play, which are unlike any thing in the dramas which Massinger wrote alone. The pathos is of a subtler edge. Middleton and Rowley, who assisted in this play, had both of them finer geniuses than their associate.”—Lamb, Spec. of Engl. Dram. Poets, p. 453.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
  • Evander, duke of Epire.
  • Cratilus, the executioner.
  • Creon, father to Simonides.
  • Simonides,
    Cleanthes,     young courtiers.
  • Lysander, husband to Eugenia, and uncle to Cleanthes.
  • Leonides, father to Cleanthes.
  • Gnotho, the clown.
  • Lawyers.
  • Courtiers.
  • Dancing-master.
  • Butler,
    Bailiff,
    Tailor,
    Coachman,
    Footman,
    Cook,     Servants to Creon.
  • Clerk.
  • Drawer.
  • Antigona, wife to Creon.
  • Hippolita, wife to Cleanthes.
  • Eugenia, wife to Lysander, and mother to Parthenia.
  • Parthenia.
  • Agatha, wife to Gnotho.
  • Old women, wives to Creon’s servants.
  • Courtezan.
Fiddlers, Servants, Guard, &c.
SCENE, Epire.