Thomas Middleton's dramatic social spaces

This article argues that Middleton’s city plays offer a different insight into the logics of the land-related relationships. Land and the social space it generates is a catalyst that drives the action and sets a city’s “stereotypical forces” in motion, an impulse prior to the promises of courtship and exchange of wealth. Therefore, land works simultaneously as a passive commodity as well as an active centre for competing and conflicting interests. Focusing on The Phoenix and (1603-4) No Wit/Help Like a Woman’s (1611) and relying on Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) spatial concepts, I explore the relationship between women and the economics of the social space.