The Roaring Girle

So I read my first play from my Oxford Thomas Middleton last night, and I might even have to say this book is better notated and arranged than the Riverside Shakespeare.  I love the copious amounts of notes at the bottom of the page and the long introductory essays at the beginning of each work.  I only imagine this is the case because Middleton is not written about nearly as much as Shakespeare.

I have a hard time talking about the play without bringing Shakespeare into the equation, even though the play is so dissimilar to Shakespeare.  And because it is dissimilar I have to say that it is, does that make sense?

I have, through Shakespeare, been looking at the Elizabethan world through the eyes of Shakespeare, which is probably a slightly skewed view, as he was a genius.  But now that I have turned my attention towards Middleton a new world is appearing.  I chose to represent this view through the Dutch painter Franz Hals, thats right, I had to go Dutch to show how Middleton writes.  Last night I finished reading The Roaring Girle, whose titular character is "more woman than man/ And more man than woman."  She is an androgynous heroine that rises above her the world around her.  She seems uncorruptible in a corruptible world.  The world of the play is full of lechers, adulterers, panderers, thieves, prostitutes, and all the other flavors of a early 17th century London.  This world felt more real than that of Shakespeare, mainly because it embraced the low like no other play from this time period that I have read.  Of course the aristocracy are a main element to the play, but the most lines went to a peasant woman!  And not only that, but a strong moral and admirable peasant!

Maybe it was the real elements of the low in this play that made me look to the Dutch painters, but so far this is the impression I have of Middleton so far.  In the introduction it made it seem that Middleton does for London of his time as Joyce did for Dublin.  I hope this is so, and look forward to more of this.