A Trick to Catch the Old One
A Trick to Catch the Old One is a Jacobean comedy written by Thomas Middleton, first published in 1608. The play is a satire in the subgenre of city comedy. Composition, performance, and printing history A Trick to Catch the Old One was entered into the Stationers' Register, together with The Revenger's Tragedy, now also commonly attributed to Middleton, by the printer George Eld on 7 October 1607. It was published in quarto by Eld in 1608. The first quarto was issued with two different title pages: the first lists Eld himself as the bookseller, but at some point during the printing process the play was apparently acquired by Henry Rocket and the second title page, also dated 1608, lists him as the bookseller. Both title pages state that the play was acted by the Children of Paul's; the second title page also states that it was performed by the Children of the Blackfriars, and that it had been presented before King James I "on New-yeares night last". Chambers and Greg, associating this statement with a record of a performance by the Blackfriars company at court during Christmas of 1608, argued that the New Year's night in question must be 1 January 1609, and various attempts have been made to reconcile that date with the date of 1608 on the title page. Evidence unknown to Chambers and Greg, however, indicates that the boys of Blackfriars also performed before the king on 1 January 1607, and this, together with similarities in paper stock and metal type between A Trick to Catch a New One and The Revenger's Tragedy, first published in 1607, suggest that both plays were in production in Eld's workshop at the same time, in late 1607 and early 1608, shortly after their entry into the Stationer's Register. A second quarto, printed by Eld for the stationer Thomas Langle, was published in 1616. The play is generally believed to have been written and first performed between 1604 and 1606. If, as the second title page indicates, it was first performed by the Children of Paul's, then it must have preceded the dissolution of that company, which seems to have occurred around the middle of 1606. Attempts to date it more precisely on the basis of internal evidence have been inconclusive. Nearly two decades after the publication of A Trick to Catch the Old One, Philip Massinger drew on it as one of the sources for his own play, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, first performed in 1626 and published in 1633. In spite of the great popularity of Massinger's play, it did not totally eclipse Middleton's, which was produced at least once more by Sir William Davenant at the theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields sometime between 1661 and 1665. After that it seems not to have been performed again until its first modern revival at the Mermaid Theatre in 1952. Summary The play's protagonist, Theodorus Witgood, has mortgaged his estates to his uncle Pecunius Lucre, a covetous