1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Massinger, Philip

MASSINGER, PHILIP (1583–1640), English dramatist, son of Arthur Massinger or Messanger, was baptized at St Thomas’s, Salisbury, on the 24th of November 1583. He apparently belonged to an old Salisbury family, for the name occurs in the city records as early as 1415. He is described in his matriculation entry at St Alban Hall, Oxford (1602), as the son of a gentleman. His father, who had also been educated at St Alban Hall, was a member of parliament, and was attached to the household of Henry Herbert, 2nd earl of Pembroke, who recommended him in 1587 for the office of examiner in the court of the marches. The 3rd earl of Pembroke, the William Herbert whose name has been connected with Shakespeare’s sonnets, succeeded to the title in 1601. It has been suggested that he supported the poet at Oxford, but the significant omission of any reference to him in any of Massinger’s prefaces points to the contrary. Massinger left Oxford without a degree in 1606. His father had died in 1603, and he was perhaps dependent on his own exertions. The lack of a degree and the want of patronage from Lord Pembroke may both be explained on the supposition that he had become a Roman Catholic. On leaving the university he went to London to make his living as a dramatist, but his name cannot be definitely affixed to any play until fifteen years later, when The Virgin Martyr (ent. at Stationers’ Hall, Dec. 7, 1621) appeared as the work of Massinger and Dekker. During these years he worked in collaboration with other dramatists. A joint letter, from Nathaniel Field, Robert Daborne and Philip Massinger, to Philip Henslowe, begs for an immediate loan of five pounds to release them from their “unfortunate extremitie,” the money to be taken from the balance due for the “play of Mr Fletcher’s and ours.” A second document shows that Massinger and Daborne owed Henslowe £3 on the 4th of July 1615. The earlier note probably dates from 1613, and from this time Massinger apparently worked regularly with John Fletcher, although in editions of Beaumont and Fletcher’s works his co-operation is usually unrecognized. Sir Aston Cokayne, Massinger’s constant friend and patron, refers in explicit terms to this collaboration in a sonnet addressed to Humphrey Moseley on the publication of his folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (Small Poems of Divers Sorts, 1658), and in an epitaph on the two poets he says:—

"Plays they did write together, were great friends,
And now one grave includes them in their ends."

After Philip Henslowe’s death in 1616 Massinger and Fletcher began to write for the King’s Men. Between 1623 and 1626 Massinger produced unaided for the Lady Elizabeth’s Men then playing at the Cockpit three pieces, The Parliament of Love, The Bondman and The Renegado. With the exception of these plays and The Great Duke of Florence, produced in 1627 by the Queen’s servants, Massinger continued to write regularly for the King’s Men until his death. The tone of the dedications of his later plays affords evidence of his continued poverty. Thus in the preface to The Maid of Honour (1632) he wrote, addressing Sir Francis Foljambe and Sir Thomas Bland: “I had not to this time subsisted, but that I was supported by your frequent courtesies and favours.” The prologue to The Guardian (licensed 1633) refers to two unsuccessful plays and two years of silence, when the author feared he had lost the popular favour. S. R. Gardiner, in an essay on “The Political Element in Massinger” (Contemp. Review, Aug. 1876), maintained that Massinger’s dramas are before all else political, that the events of his day were as openly criticized in his plays as current politics are in the cartoons of Punch. It is probable that this break in his production was owing to his free handling of public matters. In 1631 Sir Henry Herbert, the master of the revels, refused to license an unnamed play by Massinger because of “dangerous matter as the deposing of Sebastian, King of Portugal,” calculated presumably to endanger good relations between England and Spain. There is little doubt that this was the same piece as Believe as You List, in which time and place are changed, Antiochus being substituted for Sebastian, and Rome for Spain. In the prologue Massinger ironically apologizes for his ignorance of history, and professes that his accuracy is at fault if his picture comes near “a late and sad example.” The obvious “late and sad example” of a wandering prince could be no other than Charles I.’s brother-in-law, the elector palatine. An allusion to the same subject may be traced in The Maid of Honour. In another play by Massinger, not extant, Charles I. is reported to have himself struck out a passage put into the mouth of Don Pedro, king of Spain, as “too insolent.” The poet seems to have adhered closely to the politics of his patron, Philip Herbert, earl of Montgomery, and afterwards 4th earl of Pembroke, who had leanings to democracy and was a personal enemy of the duke of Buckingham. In The Bondman, dealing with the history of Timoleon, Buckingham is satirized as Gisco. The servility towards the Crown displayed in Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays reflected the temper of the court of James I. The attitude of Massinger’s heroes and heroines towards kings is very different. Camiola’s remarks on the limitations of the royal prerogative (Maid of Honour, act iv. sc. v.) could hardly be acceptable at court.

Massinger died suddenly at his house near the Globe theatre, and was buried in the churchyard of St Saviour’s, Southwark, on the 18th of March 1640. In the entry in the parish register he is described as a “stranger,” which, however, implies nothing more than that he belonged to another parish.

The supposition that Massinger was a Roman Catholic rests upon three of his plays, The Virgin Martyr (licensed 1620), The Renegado (licensed 1624) and The Maid of Honour (c. 1621). The religious sentiment is certainly such as would obviously best appeal to an audience sympathetic to Roman Catholic doctrine. The Virgin Martyr, in which Dekker probably had a large share, is really a miracle play, dealing with the martyrdom of Dorothea in the time of Diocletian, and the supernatural element is freely used. Little stress can be laid on this performance as elucidating Massinger’s views. It is not entirely his work, and the story is early Christian, not Roman Catholic. In The Renegado, however, the action is dominated by the beneficent influence of a Jesuit priest, Francisco, and the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is enforced. In The Maid of Honour a complicated situation is solved by the decision of the heroine, Camiola, to take the veil. For this she is held up “to all posterity a fair example for noble maids to imitate.” Among all Massinger’s heroines Camiola is distinguished by genuine purity and heroism.

His plays have generally an obvious moral intention. He sets himself to work out a series of ethical problems through a succession of ingenious and effective plots. In the art of construction he has, indeed, few rivals. But the virtue of his heroes and heroines is rather morbid than natural, and often singularly divorced from common-sense. His dramatis personae are in general types rather than living persons, and their actions do not appear to spring inevitably from their characters, but rather from the exigencies of the plot. The heroes are too good, and the villains too wicked to be quite convincing. Moreover their respective goodness and villainy are too often represented as extraneous to themselves. This defect of characterization shows that English drama had already begun to decline.

It seems doubtful whether Massinger was ever a popular playwright, for the best qualities of his plays would appeal rather to politicians and moralists than to the ordinary playgoer. He contributed, however, at least one great and popular character to the English stage. Sir Giles Overreach, in A New Way to Pay Old Debts, is a sort of commercial Richard III., a compound of the lion and the fox, and the part provides many opportunities for a great actor. He made another considerable contribution to the comedy of manners in The City Madam. In Massinger’s own judgment The Roman Actor was “the most perfect birth of his Minerva.” It is a study of the tyrant Domitian, and of the results of despotic rule on the despot himself and his court. Other favourable examples of his grave and restrained art are The Duke of Milan, The Bondman and The Great Duke of Florence.

Massinger was a student and follower of Shakespeare. The form of his verse, especially in the number of run-on lines, approximates in some respects to Shakespeare’s later manner. He is rhetorical and picturesque, but rarely rises to extraordinary felicity. His verse is never mean, but it sometimes comes perilously near to prose, and in dealing with passionate situations it lacks fire and directness.

The plays attributed to Massinger alone are: The Duke of Milan, a Tragedy (c. 1618, pr. 1623 and 1638); The Unnatural Combat, a Tragedy (c. 1619, pr. 1639); The Bondman, an Antient Storie (licensed 1623, pr. 1624); The Renegado, a Tragaecomedie (lic. 1624, pr. 1630); The Parliament of Love (lic. 1624; ascribed, no doubt erroneously, in the Stationers’ Register, 1660, to W. Rowley; first printed by Gifford from an imperfect MS. in 1805); A New Way to Pay Old Debts, a Comoedie (c. 1625, pr. 1632); The Roman Actor. A Tragaedie (lic. 1626, pr. 1629); The Maid of Honour (dating perhaps from 1621, pr. 1632); The Picture, a Tragecomedie (lic. 1629, pr. 1630); The Great Duke of Florence, a Comicall Historie (lic. 1627, pr. 1635); The Emperor of the East, a Tragaecomoedie (lic. and pr. 1631), founded on the story of Theodosius the Younger; Believe as You List (rejected by the censor in January, but licensed in May, 1631; pr. 1848–1849 for the Percy Society); The City Madam, a Comedie (lic. 1632, pr. 1658), which Mr Fleay (Biog. Chron. of the Eng. Drama, i. 226), however, considers to be a rifaciamento of an older play, probably by Jonson; The Guardian (lic. 1633, pr. 1655); and The Bashful Lover (lic. 1636, pr. 1655). A Very Woman, or The Prince of Tarent, licensed in 1634 as the work of Massinger alone, is generally referred to his collaboration with Fletcher. The “exquisite temperance and justice” of this piece are, according to Swinburne, foreign to Fletcher’s genius, and afford a striking example of Massinger’s artistic skill and moderation.

Twelve plays of Massinger are said to be lost, but the titles of some of these may be duplicates of those of existing plays. Five of these lost plays were MSS. used by John Warburton’s cook for pie-covers. The numerous plays in which Massinger’s co-operation with John Fletcher is generally assumed are dealt with under Beaumont and Fletcher. But it may be here noted that Mr R. Boyle has constructed an ingenious case for the joint authorship by Fletcher and Massinger of the two “Shakespearian” plays, Henry VIII. and Two Noble Kinsmen (see the New Shakspere Society’s Transactions, 1884 and 1882). Mr Boyle sees the touch of Massinger in the first two acts of the Second Maiden’s Tragedy (Lansdowne MS., lic. 1611), a play with which the names of Fletcher and Tourneur are also associated by different critics. The Fatall Dowry, a Tragedy (c. 1619, pr. 1632), which was adapted without acknowledgment by Nicholas Rowe in his Fair Penitent, was written in conjunction with Nathaniel Field; and The Virgin Martir, a Tragedie (lic. 1620, pr. 1621), with Thomas Dekker.

Massinger’s independent works were collected by Coxeter (4 vols., 1759, revised edition with introduction by Thomas Davies, 1779), by J. Monck Mason (4 vols., 1779), by William Gifford (4 vols., 1805, 1813), by Hartley Coleridge (1840), by Lieut.-Colonel Cunningham (1867), and selections by Mr Arthur Symons in the Mermaid Series (1887–1889). Gifford’s remains the standard edition, and formed the basis of Cunningham’s text. It contains “An Essay on the Dramatic Writings of Massinger” by Dr John Ferriar.

Massinger has been the object of a good deal of criticism. A metrical examination of the plays in which Massinger was concerned is given in Englische Studien (Halle, v. 74, vii. 66, viii. 39, ix. 209 and x. 383), by Mr R. Boyle, who also contributed the life of the poet in the Dictionary of National Biography. The sources of his plays are dealt with by E. Koeppel in Quellen Studien zu den Dramen Chapman’s, Massinger’s und Ford’s (Strassburg, 1897). For detailed criticism, beside the introductions to the editions quoted, see A. W. Ward, Hist. of Eng. Dram. Lit. (1899), iii. 1-47, and F. G. Fleay, Biog. Chron. of the Eng. Drama (1891), under Fletcher; a general estimate of Massinger, dealing especially with his moral standpoint, is given in Sir Leslie Stephen’s Hours in a Library (3rd series, 1879); Swinburne, in the Fortnightly Review (July 1889), while acknowledging the justice of Sir L. Stephen’s main strictures, found much to say in praise of the poet.