. He was frequently employed in composing
pageants for the City of London, and in 1620 was appointed city
chronologer. In 1624 Middleton got into trouble. His play, _The Game of
Chess_, which was a direct attack on Spain and Rome, and a personal satire
on Gondomar, was immensely popular, but its nine days' run was abruptly
stopped on the complaint of the Spanish ambassador; the poet's son, it
would seem, had to appear before the Council, and Middleton himself was
(according to tradition) imprisoned for some time. In this same year he was
living at Newington Butts. He died there in the summer of 1627, and was
succeeded as chronologer by Ben Jonson. His widow, Magdalen, received a
gratuity from the Common Council, but seems to have followed her husband in
a little over a year.

Middleton's acknowledged, or at least accepted, habit of collaboration in
most of the work usually attributed to him, and the strong suspicion, if
not more than suspicion, that he collaborated in other plays, afford
endless opportunity for the exercise of a certain kind of criticism. By
employing another kind we can discern quite sufficiently a strong
individuality in the work that is certainly, in part or in whole, his; and
we need not go farther. He seems to have had three different kinds of
dramatic aptitude, in all of which he excelled. The larger number of his
plays consist of examples of the rattling comedy of intrigue and manners,
often openly representing London life as it was, sometimes transplanting
what is an evident picture of home manners to some foreign scene apparently
for no other object than to make it more attractive to the spectators. To
any one at all acquainted with the Elizabethan drama their very titles
speak them. These titles are _Blurt Master Constable_, _Michaelmas Term_,
_A Trick to Catch the Old One_, _The Family of Love_ [a sharp satire on the
Puritans], _A Mad World, my Masters_, _No Wit no Help Like a Woman's_, _A
Chaste Maid in Cheapside_, _Anything for a Quiet Life_, _More Dissemblers
besides Women_. As with all the humour-comedies of the time, the incidents
are not unfrequently very improbable, and the action is conducted with such
intricacy and want of clearly indicated lines, that it is sometimes very
difficult to follow. At the same time, Middleton has a faculty almost
peculiar to himself of carrying, it might almost be said of hustling, the
reader or spectator along, so that he has no time to stop and consider