Today is playwright Thomas Middleton‘s birthday (1580 – 1627).  I once joked to a prof that if there’d been no Shakespeare, we’d be reading Middleton by default.  Not meaning to diss the birthday boy but, the impressive output notwithstanding, we got the better end of the deal.

Frye in Notebook 9:

One, or two, reasons why this is not an age of great tragedy are improved methods of contraception and of police investigation.  In The Changeling two people are arrested for murder on the ground that they left town the day after the murder took place: one needs ghosts of victims & confessions by the guilty to improve the quality of detection.  (CW 20, 256-7)

Trailer for a current English production of The Changeling after the jump.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLoCcnjby2E