Thomas Middleton

Thomas Middleton (1580 – July 1627) was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson among the most successful and prolific playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period. He was one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in comedy and tragedy. Also a prolific writer of masques and pageants, he remains one of the most notable and distinctive of Jacobean dramatists.

Life

Middleton was born in London and baptised on 18 April 1580. He was the son of a bricklayer who had raised himself to the status of a gentleman and who, interestingly, owned property adjoining the Curtain theatre in Shoreditch. Middleton was just five when his father died and his mother's subsequent remarriage dissolved into a 15-year battle over the inheritance of Thomas and his younger sister – an experience which must have informed and perhaps incited his repeated satire at the expense of the legal profession.

Middleton attended Queen’s College, Oxford, matriculating in 1598, but he did not graduate. Before he left Oxford (sometime in 1600 or 1601), he wrote and published three long poems in popular Elizabethan styles. None appears to have been especially successful, and one, his book of satires, ran foul of an Anglican Church ban on verse satire and was burned. Nevertheless, his literary career was launched.

Thomas Middleton (disambiguation)

Thomas Middleton (1580–1627) was an English playwright.

Thomas Middleton may also refer to:

See also

Thomas Middleton (bishop)

Thomas Fanshawe Middleton (28 January 1769 – 8 July 1822) was a noted Anglican bishop.

Life

He was born in Kedleston in Derbyshire, England, the son of Thomas Middleton, Rector of Kedleston and educated at Christs Hospital. He then went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, and on graduation was ordained in the Church of England. He was appointed curate of Gainsborough (1792), Rector of Tansor (1795), Rector of Bytham (1802), Prebendary of Lincoln (1809), Archdeacon of Huntingdon and Vicar of St Pancras.

In 1814, he became the first Bishop of Calcutta. This diocese included not just India, but the entire territory of the East India Company (EIC). When he arrived in India he found that he was not allowed to ordain "Natives of India", as all ordinations were carried out by the EIC in London. In response he founded Bishop's College in Calcutta, which admitted Britons Indians and Anglo-Indians, some of whom could go on to ordination. However although the College was built for seventy students, they still only had eight students fourteen years after it opened.