The Governors and the Governed in Middleton’s Renaissance Plays: Michelmas Term, A Game at Chess, and Others Marcel Cantu College

In the early sixteen hundreds, England shifted from the Elizabethan Era to the Jacobean Era. This important power transfer largely influenced European politics and society, consequently affecting Renaissance art and literature. Widely popular Renaissance playwright, Thomas Middleton, reflects this transfer of power in his works and comments on class structures as well as courtly corruption throughout his plays. Middleton crafts his characters, dialogue, and plot to illustrate the growing scandal found in the government and to challenge class hierarchies. Thomas Middleton was published approximately between the years 1602 and 1625, positioning his works predominantly within the Jacobean Era. Middleton’s works reflect the current political climate of the time and he is unique in that his writing displays a wide variety of socially diverse characters.

Kate Lechler’s text, “Thomas Middleton in Performance 1960-2013: A History of Reception,” explains that, “Middleton often takes the point of view of the disenfranchised. He writes about the poor and the rising early modern middle-class as often as he writes about the dukes, counts, dauphins, and kinks” (Lechler 3). This display of different social classes allows Middleton to adopt an...