The Character of Credit and the Problem of Belief in Middleton's City Comedies

Abstract

In the topsy-turvy world of Thomas Middleton's city comedies, it is the self-conscious deceivers who achieve credit, measured not by their honesty or their ability to repay outstanding debt but rather by their potential to create believable fictions around themselves. Though plays such as The Roaring Girl, Michaelmas Term, A Trick to Catch the Old One, and A Mad World, My Masters seem to depict a world in which forms of religious belief give way to widespread commodification of human desire, Middleton integrates Protestant strategies of determining credibility in his depiction of mercantile London.