As one can see, Middleton was quite the prolific writer. There are documents that prove his death, his birth, who he married, what his salary was, which plays he collaborated on and with whom, but there is little to say of the man himself. Like Shakespeare, no diary of his was left behind, and although Thomas Middleton the playwright was well documented, Thomas Middleton the man is virtually unknown - though we do know he struggled with debt and a stable household: "Thomas Harvey [his stepfather] . . . appears to have been neither a steady nor prosperous man but something of a rover. . . Thomas Middleton's memories of his childhood and adolescence must have been given their special tinge by a mather who was far from young, a stepfather who disappeared from time to time, a great amount of parental strife, and more than a little family litigation" [3].

                    Plays like A Chaste Maid in Cheapside reflect Thomas Middleton's view of the city of London. A realist at heart, Middleton puts a "vivid representation of contemporary London scenes and behaviour [in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside] . . . we get a culminatory illustration of . . . a completely immoral society, preying on itself; an ingenious plot, kept briskly moving by ironic manipulatin and inventiveness. . . characters whose viciousness is so wholeheartedly energetic and self-conscious that they go beyond mere reporting. . ." [3].