“Nay ’tis in grain, I warrant it hold colour”: The Materiality of Black in Middleton’s Black Book

Abstract

Starting with the satirical Microcynicon and flourishing in the self-referential Black Book, Thomas Middleton’s obsession with black, the colour of ink and atrabile, pervades his non-dramatic texts but also his plays, both tragic and comic. From the dyes and funeral fabrics of A Mad World, my Masters to the animals that embody it, the materiality of Middleton’s blackness is testament to his eminently sensual approach to the world he portrays and mocks. Beyond blackness, the very notion of colour animates and structures the imagination of his characters, as Vindice or Follywit, whose tricks are conceived in terms of dying fabrics. This paper maps the material instantiations of blackness as a satirical tool in Middleton’s discourse on city vices as voiced by Lucifer and his consorts in The Black Book. Taking up Gary Taylor’s approach of the self-reflexive pamphlet, it examines the ways Middleton integrates the stuff of blackness into the very form and substance of his text.