A Maid's Tragedy is one of the most effective of all Jacobean plays. Craik tells us that `it is only in the theatre that its power can be fully appreciated,' but in fact it reads extremely well, with its limited cast and uncluttered dramatic action. What puts it above most other revenge tragedies of its period is not profundity (as in Hamlet or The Broken Heart) but extraordinary dramatic invention and a technique able to draw the maximum effect out of each dramatic idea. The most amazing scene of all is that of the wedding night in which the bride rejects consummation, revealing that she is the king's mistress and that the purpose of the marriage (arranged by the king) was simply to provide a cloak under which their liaison could continue unsuspected: the bride's brazenness and the poor groom's horror and humiliation could not be more powerfully conveyed. Later scenes are equally effective and equally sure in their presentation.
The huge merit of this edition lies not in its introduction (which is comparatively brief and leaves a lot unexplored) but in the detailed annotation, where Craik answers almost all the reader's questions about what difficult lines actually mean, and suggests many convincing emendations, many of them modestly relegated to the footnotes.
This new `digital, on demand' edition has ugly, very thick print, that is not up to this publisher's usual standards.