Title
The play's original title is unknown. The manuscript bears no title, and the censor, George Buc, added a note beginning "This second Maiden's Tragedy (for it hath no name inscribed)...". Buc was comparing the play to Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy. Buc's comment confused a seventeenth century owner of the manuscript, Humphrey Moseley, who listed the play in the Stationers' Register as The Maid's Tragedy, 2nd Part. Buc's title has stuck and the play is usually referred to as The Second Maiden's Tragedy.
However, two recent editors of the play have preferred to retitle it. In his anthology Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies, Martin Wiggins argues that since the word "second" refers to the play, not to a character (there is no "second maiden"), Buc was actually calling the play The Maiden's Tragedy. In Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, Julia Briggs goes further: pointing out that the word "maiden" never appears in the play, she retitles it The Lady's Tragedy, after the unnamed female protagonist.
Briggs was anticipated by the 1994 Hen and Chicken production in Bristol, which also used The Lady's Tragedy. Other theatrical productions have also retitled the play. For example, in 1984, the first, modern professional production at London's Upstream Theatre called it The Tyrant's Tragedy, after the play's primary protagonist. The play has similarly been known in the past as simply The Tyrant, identifying it as being a lost play by Philip Massinger of the same title.)
The play has received few modern revivals. It was the opening production at the newly refurbished Hackney Empire studio in 2006 starring Jos Vantyler.
Read more about this topic: The Second Maiden's Tragedy
Famous quotes containing the word title:
“Et in Arcadia ego.
[I too am in Arcadia.]”
—Anonymous, Anonymous.
Tomb inscription, appearing in classical paintings by Guercino and Poussin, among others. The words probably mean that even the most ideal earthly lives are mortal. Arcadia, a mountainous region in the central Peloponnese, Greece, was the rustic abode of Pan, depicted in literature and art as a land of innocence and ease, and was the title of Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral romance (1590)
“It is impossible to strive for the heroic life. The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Eternity is not ours by right; and, alone, unrequited sufferings here, form no title thereto.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)