Reputation
Middleton's work has long been praised by literary critics, among them Algernon Charles Swinburne and T. S. Eliot. The latter thought Middleton was second only to Shakespeare. In his own time, he was thought talented enough to revise Shakespeare's Macbeth and Measure for Measure.
Middleton's plays were staged throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, each decade offering more productions than the last. Even less familiar works have been staged: A Fair Quarrel was performed at the National Theatre, and The Old Law has been performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The Changeling has been adapted for film several times, and the tragedy Women Beware Women remains a stage favourite. The Revenger's Tragedy was adapted into Alex Cox's film Revengers Tragedy, the opening credits of which attribute the play's authorship to Middleton.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Middleton
Famous quotes containing the word reputation:
“I am sorry to say we whites have a sad reputation among many of the Polynesians. The natives of these islands are naturally of a kindly and hospitable temper, but there has been implanted among them an almost instinctive hate of the white man. They esteem us, with rare exceptions, such as some of the missionaries, the most barbarous, treacherous, irreligious, and devilish creatures on the earth.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)