The Second Maiden's Tragedy

The Second Maiden's Tragedy is a Jacobean play that survives only in manuscript. The play comes from a handwritten manuscript and it is the only one left in existence in that form. It was written in 1611, and performed in the same year by the King's Men. The play itself was written during the Jacobean era. Included in the manuscript are stage directions as well as the text. Because there is only one manuscript, there are no other references as to what other stage directions and notes were needed. The manuscript was acquired, but never printed, by the publisher Humphrey Moseley after the closure of the theatres in 1642. In 1807, the manuscript was acquired by the British Museum. Victorian Poet and critic, Algernon Swinburne, was the first to attribute this work to Thomas Middleton; this judgement has since been joined by most editors and scholars. The play has received few modern revivals. It was the opening production at the newly refurbished Hackney Empire studio in 2006 starring Alexander Fiske-Harrison and Jos Vantyler.

The play's original title is unknown. The manuscript bears no title, and the censor, George Buc, added a note beginning "This second Maiden's Tragedy (for it hath no name inscribed)...". Buc was comparing the play to Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy. Buc's comment confused a seventeenth-century owner of the manuscript, Humphrey Moseley, who listed the play in the Stationers' Register as The Maid's Tragedy, 2nd Part. Buc's title has stuck and the play is usually referred to as The Second Maiden's Tragedy.

However, two recent editors of the play have preferred to retitle it. In his anthology Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies, Martin Wiggins argues that since the word "second" refers to the play, not to a character (there is no "second maiden"), Buc was actually calling the play The Maiden's Tragedy. In Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, Julia Briggs goes further: pointing out that the word "maiden" never appears in the play, she retitles it The Lady's Tragedy, after the unnamed female protagonist.

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