Will Gray wrote (supplying an Eliot quote:)
>
> But it produced one great play--The Roaring Girle--a great play in
> spite of the tedious long speeches of some of the principal
> characters, in spite of the clumsy machinery of the plot: for the
> reason that Middleton was a great observer of human nature, without
> fear, without sentiment, without prejudice.

Will, I think that the rest of the comment on Middleton is worth
sending in as it gives a good insight to Eliot and impersonality
(bracketed material is mine:)

And Middleton in the end--after criticism has subtracted all that
Rowley, all that Dekker, all that others contributed--is a great
example of great English drama. He has no message; he is merely a
great recorder. Incidentally, in flashes and when the dramatic need
comes, he is a great poet, a great master of versification:
    I that am of your blood was taken from you
    For your better health; look no more upon't,
    But cast it to the ground regardlessly,
    Let the common sewer take it from distinction:
    Beneath the stars, upon yon meteor
    Ever hung my fate, 'mongst things corruptible;
    I ne'er could pluck it from him; my loathing
    Was prophet to the rest, but ne'er believed.
The man who wrote these lines remains inscrutable, solitary,
unadmired; welcoming collaboration, indifferent to fame; dying no one
knows when and no one knows how; attracting, in three hundred years,
no personal admiration. Yet he wrote one tragedy [The Changeling]
which more than any play except those of Shakespeare has a profound
and permanent moral value and horror; and one comedy [The Roaring
Girle] which more than any Elizabethan comedy realizes a free and
noble womanhood.

Regards,
    Rick Parker