Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ... "A Mad World, My Masters," and "A Trick to Catch the Old One;" the plot is more complex than is Middleton's fashion; the satire lacks subtlety and the wit an edge; there is but one scene of any great excellence in execution, i. e. the teasing of Moll by her brother and the Ancient, iii. 2, and that is successful rather from its good-humored drollery than from its sharpness of wit. These qualities, as we shall see when we come to consider the style of the two men, indicate Rowley rather than Middleton; and altogether it seems to me that unless some definite proof of Middleton's authorship is advanced, we have not sufficient reason to justify us in disregarding the assertion of the publisher, and removing "A Match at Midnight" from the list of the Rowley plays. In either case, however, whether the reader chooses to regard this play as Middleton's for the Children of the Revels, revised later by Rowley, with copious emendations, for another company, or prefers to consider it a close imitation of Middleton written wholly by Rowley, for the Company, licensed Children, of the Revels, when he was changing from the Prince's to the Lady Elizabeth's, and so for the time was unattached to any company, he must ascribe to Rowley a considerable share in the published version; and it is certainly justifiable to assert that those characteristics that are found here and in other plays with which Rowley was connected, but not in plays in which Middleton worked with him, are due to his cooperation, and belong to him rather than to Middleton. In other words, we may safely use this play as we may use "The Birth of Merlin " and "A Cure for a Cuckold." We may admit that it is capable of furnishing corroboratory evidence in cases where a probability of Rowley's...