The Project Gutenberg EBook of Philip Massinger by A. H. Cruickshank This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license Title: Philip Massinger Author: A. H. Cruickshank Release Date: February 23, 2011 [Ebook 35365] Language: English ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHILIP MASSINGER*** Philip Massinger By A. H. Cruickshank Sometime Scholar and Fellow of New College, Oxford Canon of Durham, and Professor of Greek and Classical Literature, in the University of Durham Oxford Basil Blackwell, Broad Street 1920 Contents Dedication . .2 Preface . .4 Philip Massinger . .5 Appendix I. The Small Actor In Massinger's Plays . 161 Appendix II . 165 Appendix III. The Collaborated Plays . 168 Appendix IV. On The Influence Of Shakspere . 181 Appendix V. Warburton's List . 188 Appendix VI. A Metrical Peculiarity In Massinger . 189 Appendix VII. “Believe As You List” ........... 200 Appendix VIII. Collation Of Ms. Of “Believe As You List” 207 Appendix IX. “The Parliament Of Love” .......... 224 Appendix X. The Authorship Of “The Virgin Martyr” ... 228 Appendix XI. The Authorship Of “The Fatal Dowry” ... 230 Appendix XII. The Tragedy Of “Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt” ........................ 231 Appendix XIII. “The Second Maiden's Tragedy” ..... 232 Appendix XIV. “The Powerful Favorite” .......... 234 Appendix XV. “Double Falsehood” ............ 235 Appendix XVI. Middleton's “A Trick To Catch The Old One” ........................... 236 Appendix XVII . 239 Appendix XVIII. Alliteration In Massinger . 245 Appendix XIX . 248 Appendix XX. Bibliography . 259 Index . 263 Footnotes . 275 [i] Dedication Inscribed To Frederic G. Kenyon In Memory Of A Friendship Of Forty-Four Years [ii] Dedication 3 [v] Preface In confessing that the war made me write a book I do not stand alone. Sensible as I am of its defects, I trust it will help to spread the knowledge of Massinger's works, and will invite others to deal on similar lines with the other dramatists of the great age. The design widened as it went on, and was then contracted. In the end I thought it wiser to confine myself to digesting the knowledge which I had of Massinger's text. The Clarendon Press undertook to publish this book, but as, owing to war-work, they could fix no date, I asked them to release me. There would be no occasion to mention this fact were it not that it was owing to the original arrangement that I received much valuable help and advice from Mr. Percy Simpson. Many other scholars and friends have kindly aided me in various matters, among whom I should like to mention: Mr. J. C. Bailey, Mr. P. James Bayfield (photographer to Dulwich College), Dr. A. C. Bradley, Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. A. H. Bullen, Mr. A. K. Cook, Professor W. Macneile Dixon, Mr. H. H. E. Gaster, the Dean of Gloucester, Mr. E. Gosse, Sir W. H. Hadow, Archdeacon Hobhouse, Sir Sidney Lee, Mr. C. Leudesdorf, Dr. Falconer Madan, Mr. A. W. Pollard, Dr. P. G. Smyly, the Master of University College, Durham, Sir A. Ward, and Sir George F. Warner. Last, but not least, I thank my wife for her skilful and ready help with the proofs. A. H. Cruickshank. [001] Philip Massinger It is interesting to revise the literary judgments of youth; it is pleasant to find them confirmed by a more mature judgment. This train of thought has led me to read Massinger once more; and as I read, the desire arose to treat his works, to the best of my ability, with the attention to detail which modern scholarship requires. A great amount of valuable work has been done in the last fifty years on the writers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages; but no one, perhaps with the exception of Boyle, has applied to Massinger the care which Shakspere, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, to name no others, have secured. There is no reason why any of our great dramatists should be treated with less respect than those of Greece and Rome, of France and Germany. The first thing to be done was to facilitate references by numbering the lines of Massinger's plays;1 the next was to investigate once more the facts of his life, and to correlate them with the period in which he lived; the third was to read typical plays of the period, so as to arrive at a just estimate of our author. His life will not detain us long. We know far less of him than we do of Shakspere. None of his sayings have been preserved to us; hardly any incidents of his career. His father was house-steward to two of the Earls of Pembroke, first to Henry Herbert, then [002] to William Herbert,2 Shakspere's friend. The elder Massinger was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and for several years a Member of Parliament. Philip Massinger, the dramatist, was 1 It is much to be wished that someone would essay the same task for Beaumont and Fletcher, though there the work would be less easy, partly from the looseness of the metres, partly from the corruption of the text, but chiefly from the presence of prose-passages bordering on verse. 2 A. à Wood's Fasti Oxonienses, p. 313. 6 Philip Massinger born at Salisbury in 1584. In 1602 he went up to St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, where his father had been an undergraduate. We are told by A. à Wood that he went at Lord Pembroke's expense, but that he did not work hard at the University, and took no degree.3 In or after the year 1606 he seems to have gone to London, and to have speedily engaged in the work of writing plays.4 The wide reading which his plays presuppose probably began at Oxford. It was the custom in those days, as in the time of Plautus at Rome,5 for playwrights to revise old plays; and still more was it usual for them to collaborate.6 We find Massinger at work in this [003] way with Field,7 Daborne,8 Dekker, Tourneur, and above all, with Fletcher. With the latter he worked from 1613 to 1623. In that year, for some unknown reason, he seceded from the service of the leading company of actors of the day, who went by the name of the King's men, and wrote unaided three plays for the Queen's men, The Parliament of Love, The Bondman, and The Renegado. After Fletcher's death, in 1625, Massinger rejoined the King's men, and wrote for them until his death in 1640. 3 Herein he resembled F. Beaumont. G. Langbaine, on the other hand, says that the Earl sent Massinger to Oxford, where he “closely pursued his studies.” But we must be careful how we believe Langbaine; his account of our poet begins thus: “This author was born at Salisbury, in the reign of King Charles the First, being son to Philip Massinger, a gentleman belonging to the Earl of Montgomery.” Here are three gross blunders at once. 4 Boyle (N. S. S., xxi., p. 472) says that “Massinger's inveterate habit of repeating himself arose probably from his profession as an actor.” I know of no evidence for this hypothesis. Cf., however, p. 6, note 1. 5 Cf. Mommsen's History of Rome, English translation, vol. ii., p. 440. 6 Thus in the play of Lady Jane, of which The Famous History of Sir T. Wyatt is a fragment, we find five authors concerned. It will be remembered that Eupolis contributed to the Knights of Aristophanes. 7 For some account of Field see Appendix XI. 8 Daborne's letters bulk large in the Henslowe Correspondence. We have two plays of his: A Christian turn'd Turke, based on the story of the pirate Ward; and The Poor Man's Comfort, a tragi-comedy. Like Marston, he abandoned the stage in middle life and took orders, before 1618. It is therefore unlikely that he collaborated with Massinger in any of the plays which we possess. Philip Massinger 7 It has been surmised from the vivid colouring of The Virgin Martyr9 and the plot of The Renegado,10 where a Jesuit plays a leading part and is portrayed in a pleasing light, that Massinger turned Roman Catholic. The evidence for this theory is quite inadequate. Indeed, we might as well argue from Gazet's language that the author followed the Anglican via media.11 Plots derived from French, Spanish, and Italian sources would naturally contain Roman Catholic machinery. We might as well infer that Shakspere was a Roman Catholic because Silvia goes to Friar Patrick's cell,12 or because Friar Laurence is prominent in Romeo and Juliet.13 [004] We know that Massinger lived a life of comparative poverty; on one occasion we find him, with two other dramatic authors, asking for a loan of £5.14 The person who thus obliged the three writers was Philip 9 Such a reference to Acta Sanctorum as is contained in these lines might be made by an Anglican: ANTONINUSfFNS. It may be, the duty And loyal service, with which I pursued her, And sealed it with my death, will be remember'd Among her blessed actions.—V. M., IV., 3, 28. More stress might be laid on the metaphor contained in these lines: THEOPHILUSfFNS. O! mark it, therefore, and with that attention, As you would hear an embassy from heaven, By a wing'd legate.—V.