No More Learning

Massinger and another
(not Fletcher). The disowning of Cesario by his mother is probably taken
from La Cour Sainte of Nicolas Caussin, published in 1624 (not 1632, as
stated by Koeppel). The plot of the play does not at all resemble the story
of La ilustre Fregona of Cervantes.
The Noble Gentleman, licensed 3 Feb. 1626 as by Fletcher. He may have
planned the play and written some passages, but no complete scene can be
attributed to him.
Loves Cure, or The Martial Maid, date uncertain but not earlier than
1622 in its present form. No scene can be attributed to Fletcher; Massinger
probably wrote acts , iv, v, sc. 1, 2. There is no real ground for the sug-
gestion (by Stiefel, A. L. ) that this play is taken from the Spanish comedy by
Guillén de Castro, La fuerza de la costumbre. The two dramas are founded
on the same story, but the treatment is entirely different.
The Night-Walker, or the Little Theife, licensed as corrected by Shirley,
11 May 1633; printed 1640; the original play was, perhaps, as early as 1614.
As it stands, the first three acts are by Fletcher, with revision, and the last
two by Shirley, who must have rewritten this part of the play.
Loves Pilgrimage, revived 1635, with alterations, perhaps by Shirley, in-
cluding some matter from Jonson’s New Inne. Fletcher appears most markedly
in act 1, sc. 2, acts 11 and 111. From Cervantes, Las dos Doncellas(Nov. Exempl. ).
A Very Woman, or The Prince of Tarent, licensed 1634; printed as
Massinger's, 1655, and never included among Beaumont and Fletcher's plays.
As we have it, it is revised from an earlier drama (see prologue): Fletcher
was probably the author of acts III and iv, sc. 1, 3. It is com mmonly identified
with A Woman's Plot, acted at court 1621, because of the entry in Stationers'
register, 9 Sept. 1653 of 'A Very Woman or The Woman's Plot, but this
second title has no justification in the play, and is, perhaps, a mistake.
The Coronation, printed in the folio of 1679, is by Shirley. The Widow,
attributed in the quarto to Jonson, Fletcher and Middleton, is probably by
Middleton.
The Faithful Friends was entered in Stationers' register, 29 June 1660
as by Beaumont and Fletcher, and first printed in Weber's edition, 1812; but
it is not likely that they had any share in it.
The following appear to be lost: The History of Cardenio, entered in
Stationers' register, 9 Sept. 1653 as by Fletcher and Shakespeare, and, perhaps,
the same as the Cardenes, Cardema or Cardano, which ras acted at court,
1613; The Jeweller of Amsterdam, entered Stationers' register, 8 April
1654 as by Fletcher, Field and Massinger, probably produced about 1616;
A Woman's Plot, acted at court, 1621; The Devil of Dowgate, or Usury
put to Use, 'written by Fletcher,' mentioned as a new play in Herbert's
official register, 17 Oct. 1623; A Right Woman, entered in Stationers' register,
29 June 1660 as by Beaumont and Fletcher; Mador, King of Great Britain,
attributed to Beaumont, Stationers' register, 29 June 1660. These two latter
attributions must be regarded as very doubtful.


## p. 141 (#159) ############################################

CHAPTER VI
PHILIP MASSINGER
EVERY biographer of Philip Massinger must echo the frequently
repeated complaint that we know very little about the life of many
of the chief dramatists of the times of Elizabeth and the first two
Stewart kings. We may consider it an exceptional good fortune
that we know at least the chief facts of Massinger's early
days—that he was born at Salisbury in 1583, the son of Arthur
Massinger, who, in some manner, was intimately connected with
the 'noble family of the Herberts,' to use Philip's own expression,
and who was evidently highly esteemed by his employers ; that
his baptism took place on 24 November 1583, and that he was
entered on 14 May 1602 at St Alban hall in the university of
Oxford. In 1606, he left the university for unexplained reasons
without having taken his degree. From Oxford he came to
London, where we lose sight of him for many years as totally as
of the great immigrant from Stratford-on-Avon about twenty years
before.
One fact, however, stands out clearly — that Massinger's
London career was far from prosperous. When we hear of
him again, in 1613 or 1614, we find him already immersed in
those financial difficulties which remained the heavy burden
of his life. He reappears as one of the three signatories of a
petition for the loan of five pounds, addressed to that powerful
personage to whom many needy dramatists used to look more
or less hopefully—the theatrical manager and broker Philip
Henslowe. In a few additional words, Massinger pathetically calls
a
him his “true loving friend,' and the joint request was granted.
There was a similar pleading in 1615.
As in the case of this epistle to Henslowe, most of the first
dramatic ventures of Massinger seem to have been joint pro-
ductions. The first time we meet his name in print, on the
title-page of an evidently successful drama, we find it coupled
with the name of an older and very popular dramatist. In 1622


## p. 142 (#160) ############################################

142
Philip Massinger
was published The Virgin Martir, a Tragedy, written by Philip
Massinger and Thomas Dekker. But Dekker, whose poetical
temper was different from Massinger's, was neither his first nor
his most important fellow worker. A good many years before
the composition of The Virgin Martir, he must have fallen under
the sway of John Fletcher. It is a curious fact that no early
edition of any one of those dramas which have been recognised as
the joint labours of Fletcher and Massinger makes the slightest
reference to the participation of the younger dramatist; all were
printed as by Fletcher alone. Massinger seems to have been quite
content to leave the risk and the glory to his teacher; so far as
we know, he never protested against the omission of his name
on the title-pages of the dramas printed during his lifetime.
However, one of his most enthusiastic benefactors and friends, Sir
Aston Cockayne, repeatedly insisted on the fact of Massinger's
cooperation with Fletcher-an assertion which, in the case of a
considerable number of Fletcherian plays, has received support
from the philological researches of later times. And that he was
buried in Fletcher's grave, probably by his own wish, may be
taken as a striking proof that no coldness had arisen between
Massinger and the man with whom he had associated in the
early years of his dramatic writing.
We are not able to fix the time when Massinger ventured to
present himself as an independent author to the public of the
metropolis; but we may assume that this did not happen much
before the end of the second decade of the seventeenth century.
For the ensuing period of his life we possess a considerable number
of direct utterances of his own, the authenticity of which is not
to be questioned, but the biographical value of which is somewhat
impaired by their official character and by the consideration neces-
sarily shown in them for the position and feelings of the persons
addressed. These utterances consist in the dedications prefixed
by Massinger to the ten dramas published by himself. In these
letters, Massinger's prose appears to the greatest advantage; it is,
perhaps, a little pompous now and then, but it is clear and per-
fectly free from Euphuistic tricks of style.
Much less pleasing are the glimpses of the poet's private life
afforded by these documents. Both the first dedication, preceding
.
The Duke of Millaine (1623), and the last, composed for The
Unnaturall Combat in 1639, about a year before his death, exhibit
the poet as much dissatisfied with his vocation as a dramatic writer.
He speaks of the misfortunes which cast him on this course and


## p. 143 (#161) ############################################

>
Massinger's Personal Life 143
numbers himself among those whose 'necessitous fortunes' made
them choose poetry as their profession. Complaints about the
neglect which his age showed to the contemned sons of the
Muses,' and about his own depressed circumstances, protestations
that he could never have lived without the help of those kind
patrons who endeavoured to rebuild the ruins of demolished
poesy' and declarations of his gratitude and his devotion, are inter-
mingled in these epistles with rarer outbursts of consciousness of
his poetical powers, remarks about the intrinsic value of his works
and hints that there were some eminent men who have not
thought themselves disparaged, I dare not say honoured, to be
celebrated the patrons of my humble studies. '
Two of the dedications show that the poet did his best to keep
up that connection with the Pembroke family which he regarded
as a paternal inheritance. In 1624, he dedicated his tragi-
comedy The Bond-Man to the younger brother of the third earl
of Pembroke Philip Herbert, earl of Montgomery—with respectful
allusions to the many happy years his father had spent in the
service of that honourable house ; and, nine years later, in 1633,
he recommended his famous comedy A New Way to Pay Old
Debts to the favourable acceptance of Montgomery's son-in-law,
Robert Dormer, earl of Carnarvon, in very humble and com-
plimentary terms. Besides these dedications, two of his rare
non-dramatic poems refer to members of the same family. One
of these poems is a poetical supplication of uncertain date,
addressed to the 'Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain. The
earl's Christian name is missing ; but the whole tenor of this
petition leads to the conclusion that it was meant to reach
the ear of the third earl of Pembroke, the William Herbert
frequently mentioned in biographies of Shakespeare, who had
been appointed lord chamberlain in 1615. It is to be feared, ,
however, that this most persuasive poetical begging-letter, in
which Massinger speaks of his 'trod-down poverty,' had not the
desired effect; for, had the earl proved kind, Massinger would
assuredly have shown his gratitude by dedicating one of his later
dramas to this powerful nobleman. There is an old tradition
that William Herbert had been the protector of young Massinger
during the years of his university life, but had withdrawn his
helping hand later, for unknown reasons. This rumour is not
verified by the epistle in question, the manuscript of which was
rediscovered but a few years ago; for it contains no reference
to former benefits received by the poet.


## p. 144 (#162) ############################################

144
Philip Massinger
The other poem, with the motto Sero sed serio, is an elegy on
the death of Charles, lord Herbert, third son of Philip Herbert,
who, after the death of his brother, in 1630, had become fourth
earl of Pembroke. The poet blames himself for having remained
silent on the occasion of the wedding of this unfortunate young
nobleman, which had taken place at Christmas 1634, a few weeks
only before his early death at Florence in January 1635; and he
evidently tries to compensate for this sin of omission by courtly
flattery in a funeral poem, the most undignified of all his compo-
sitions and a striking contrast to the above mentioned supplication,
in which the poet declares that neither a pension nor a place could
induce him ‘to part with his own candour ! ' It is stated that this
fourth earl of Pembroke granted him an annuity of £30 or £40
with reversion to his widow.
The dedications and poems make us acquainted with numerous
members of the nobility to whom Massinger felt himself bound for
benefits received, or whom he wished to number among his patrons.
About his relations to his literary contemporaries we gain very
little information from Massinger himself, and not much more
from other sources. One of his shorter poems is addressed to
James Smith, an obscure clerical poet, whom he praises as the
author of a 'neat' poem, calling him, after the fashion of Ben
Jonson, his ‘son. One of the many dramas of James Shirley,
entitled The Grateful Servant (1630), Massinger ushered in by
some commendatory verses, whose well weighed and carefully
worded praise leaves a deeper impression than the customary
hyperboles of similar compositions. Among the poets who did
him a similar service at the publication of his own dramas, we
find, together with Shirley, Massinger's other fellow dramatists
John Ford, Thomas May, Thomas Goffe and his faithful friend
and fervent admirer Sir Aston Cockayne.
Massinger is said to have been married : a Miss Massinger,
who died in 1762, claimed a direct descent from him. But all
the other circumstances of his life, which seems to have had its
full share of cares besides ceaseless work, are hidden from us. He
died in March 1640 and was buried on the 18th of that month in
the churchyard of St Saviour's church in Southwark, where John
Gower had also found his resting place.
Massinger's dramatic apprenticeship, the period of his col-
laboration with other dramatists, especially with Fletcher, has,
of late, frequently attracted the attention of English scholars.
Their investigations have resulted in a great increase of the number


## p. 145 (#163) ############################################

Massinger's Collaboration with Fletcher 145
of plays for which this cooperation is to be assumed. At the
time of the publication of the first collected edition of Beaumont
and Fletcher's works, in 1647, Cockayne blamed the editor on
account of the injustice towards Fletcher implied in the title,
inasmuch as Beaumont had written but few of those dramas. As
Massinger's friend, Cockayne availed himself of this opportunity
to inform the world of another noteworthy fact about which the
editor had been silent: he pointed out that Massinger also had
to claim a partnership ‘in other few, adding that he got this
information from 'Fletcher's chief bosom friend'-possibly from
Massinger himself. Not content with Cockayne's few plays, modern
enquirers have traced the hand of Massinger in about twenty pieces
of the Fletcherian series. It cannot be denied that the modern
method of settling questions of doubtful authorship is sometimes
purely subjective, and many discrepancies have, accordingly, to be
noted between the conclusions reached by different scholars. But,
in Massinger's case, the task was facilitated by a striking peculiarity
in the writer. Massinger is afflicted with the itch of iteration to
an exceptional degree: his repetitions of the same phrases and
similes are countless. Wherever such marks appear in great
numbers, Massinger's cooperation may safely be held to be very
likely. On the other hand, it is not to be doubted that, in all their
joint compositions, the older and more experienced Fletcher was
the leading spirit, the chief builder, to whose directions Massinger
had to attend. That, no doubt, is the reason why he never himself
thought of proclaiming his partnership to the world!
A second, much smaller, group of plays consists of those which,
in the old prints, are assigned to Massinger and some other
dramatist. The oldest of these pieces seems to be the amusing
comedy called The Old Law. Though published very late, in 1656,
as the work of Massinger, Middleton and William Rowley, the
mention of the year 1599 in the dialogue of this piece seems to
prove that it was composed several years before the beginning of
Massinger's dramatic career. It is just possible that he revised
the old play; but, if he did so, he carefully abstained from any
material alterations. No trace of his individual style is to be
discovered in the existing text.
Not the slightest doubt, on the contrary, can be entertained
concerning Massinger's cooperation in two other plays attributed
to him and Dekker and Field respectively on the title-pages of the
1 As to the probable shares of Massinger and Fletcher respectively in the dramas in
which they collaborated, see appendix to chap. v.
E. L. VI.
10
CH. VI.


## p. 146 (#164) ############################################

146
Philip Massinger
old prints. Both plays were published in the lifetime of the
three authors : the coarse, but by no means ineffective legendary
drama The Virgin Martir, in 1622, as the work of Massinger and
Dekker, and, in 1632, the impressive tragedy The Fatall Dowry,
assigned to him and Nathaniel Field, his old friend, the writer of the
letter to Henslowe signed also by Massinger and Daborne. Internal
evidence corroborates the statements of the printers. As to the
scenes of Massinger and those of Dekker, even a careless reader
must be struck by the difference of character between them'; but
it is a more delicate task to distinguish between the work of
Massinger and that of Field.
Massinger's name alone fronts the ten plays, published within
the period 1623 to 1639, for which he wrote his dedications, and
four other plays, posthumously printed in 1655 and 1658. One
of the three dramas which appeared together in 1655, entitled
A Very Woman, or The Prince of Tarent, is regarded, but with-
out any certainty, as another joint effort of Fletcher and Massinger.
In the course of the nineteenth century, two more plays bearing
the unmistakable stamp of Massinger's authorship were discovered.
Besides these sixteen plays, on which our study of Massinger's
art must be based, we know the titles of twelve more, which seem
to be irretrievably lost.
Among Massinger's sixteen genuine dramas, only three trage-
dies are to be found. All his other plays end without blood-
shed, even a drama whose historical foundation might exact
the death of the hero-one of the new-found plays, bearing the
fanciful title Believe as you List, published for the first time in
1844. This drama is mentioned in all discussions of the question
whether Massinger frequently gave vent to political opinions
in his dramas. Generally speaking, the dramatists of his time
shrank from touching on the politics of the day, for excellent
reasons: they knew but too well that political dramas might
have unpleasant consequences for both actors and writers. George
Chapman's two sensational dramas, for instance, treating of the
story of the life and sudden fall of an ambitious French politician,
Charles, duke of Biron, marshal of France, who had been be-
headed in Paris but a few years previously, 31 July 1602, caused
a complaint by the French ambassador, in consequence of which
the representations of the plays were stopped and some of the
actors sent to prison. The author seems to have escaped scot-
free; but, in 1608, at the printing of his plays, he experienced
1 Cf. ante, chap. II.
Cf. ante, chap. v.


## p. 147 (#165) ############################################

6
The English Drama and Politics 147
the wrath of the censor, who mutilated his text in so ferocious a
manner that, in his dedication, Chapman speaks of 'these poor
dismembered poems. ' Another playwright, Thomas Middleton, in
1624, in his allegorical drama A Game at Chesse made himself
the interpreter of the intense dissatisfaction of the great majority
of the English people with the policy of James I, who endeavoured
to keep up friendly relations with Spain in opposition to a strong
national feeling against any alliance with the arch-enemy. The
incensed king threatened the players with heavy fines in case of
another misbehaviour; but the poet himself was not to be found,
and the king's resentment seems to bave been of short duration :
That, notwithstanding those warning examples, Massinger could
not resist the temptation of meddling with politics, we know on
good authority. In January 1631, the master of the revels, Sir
Henry Herbert, refused to license one of Massinger's plays, “be-
cause it did contain dangerous matter, as the deposing of Sebastian,
King of Portugal, by Philip II, and there being a peace sworn
betwixt the Kings of England and Spain. ' From the same 'Cato
of the stage’ we hear, besides, that, in 1638, king Charles himself,
perusing a new play by Massinger, entitled The King and the
Subject, marked one passage for alteration with the words: “This
is too insolent, and to be changed. ' The play itself is lost; but
the objectionable verses have been preserved for us by the censor
himself. They are taken from an angry speech of Don Pedro, king
of Spain, proclaiming despotically the absolute right of the king
to raise new taxes. It was then the time of king Charles's exaction
of ship-money, stoutly resisted by many of his subjects, and it is
hardly to be doubted that the poet when composing, and the king
when cancelling, this passage were both thinking, from a very
different point of view, of the possible effect this manifestation
might have on the audience.
Believe as you List, against which the censor had entered his
veto in order to avoid giving offence to the Spanish government,
was licensed a few months later, in May 1631, in a revised shape,
the poet having made it acceptable by changing the costume of
his dramatis personae. Instead of the Portuguese king deposed
by Spain, Massinger introduced a fabulous Asiatic king Antiochus,
deposed and pitilessly persecuted by Rome. After this change,
the censor found nothing smacking of recent political changes
in the play; and this proves that he did not think of the pos-
sibility of another political interpretation, since suggested by
1 For an account of A Game at Chesse, cf. chap. II.
10-2


## p. 148 (#166) ############################################

148
Philip Massinger
S. R. Gardiner? . According to this view, Massinger's play had a
very real meaning indeed, being intended to mirror the fate of
the unfortunate brother-in-law of Charles I, Frederick V, elector
Palatine and titular king of Bohemia, who, at that time, was a
landless fugitive persecuted by his powerful enemies, just as Mas-
singer's dethroned Antiochus was by the Romans. Prusias king of
Bithynia, who, against his own inclinations, is forced to give up
his guest to his enemies, is said to represent Charles himself, who
refrained from actively assisting his brother-in-law; Flaminius, the
Roman ambassador, is the Spanish ambassador, intriguing against
Frederick at the English court; Philoxenus, the king of Bithynia's
counsellor, who made common cause with Rome, is the lord treasurer
Weston, who used his influence with the king in the Spanish interest;
and, finally, the kind queen of Bithynia, who tried in vain to save
the hapless fugitive, is Henrietta Maria, queen of England, who
cordially disliked Weston.
Some years after the publication of Gardiner's ingenious hypo-
thesis, the main source of Massinger's plot was discovered in the
French historian Pierre Victor Palma Cayet's account of the
fate of the Portuguese pretender, known as the false Sebastian?
A detailed comparison led to the result that the dramatist found
the prototypes of all his chief characters in Cayet's work, with the
sole exception of the nameless wife of Prusias. It is quite possible,
however, that her introduction was caused by the same need of the
dramatist which made him add two amatory incidents to his plot:
he wanted some female characters to brighten a political story
which offered him only male personages. Gardiner's assumption
that the dramatist, when he made his Antiochus a fugitive, must
have been thinking of Frederick’s wanderings, because there was
nothing similar to be found in the Sebastian story, is refuted by an
examination of Massinger's source. Cayet gives a detailed account
of the wanderings of the Portuguese impostor, and tells how,
flying before the persecutions of the Spaniards, he came first to
Venice in the hope of being acknowledged and protected by the
republic, and afterwards to the court of the grand duke of Florence,
who, by the pressure of Spain, was finally obliged to deliver the
pretender into the hands of his enemies. Also, the surprising fact
already alluded to, that, at the end of the English drama, we hear
only of the imprisonment, not of the death, of the hero, is ex-
1 The Political Element in Massinger,' Contemporary Review, August, 1876;
reprinted in the Transactions of the New Shakespere Society for the same year.
Cayet died in 1610.


## p. 149 (#167) ############################################

Massinger's Political Sympathies 149
plained by the circumstance that Cayet, when penning his account,
was not yet aware of the final execution of the pretender.
The decisive influence of the French chronicler on Massinger's
plot is not to be questioned; nevertheless, it is possible that
the dramatist was reminded by some of the circumstances of the
Sebastian story of the sad fate of the German prince and the
vacillations of the English king, and that, induced by his personal
and political sympathies, he did his best to surround Antiochus
and his friends with a poetical nimbus. His fugitive, certainly, is
no impostor, but a man of kingly bearing. Gardiner observed that
the two Herberts, the brothers William and Philip, were opposed
to Weston, trying to counterbalance his influence by means
of the queen: and the introduction into Massinger's play of
the nameless queen of Bithynia and the part taken by her in its
action remain the only substantial arguments in favour of the
historian's political interpretation.
That Massinger was sincerely interested in the fate of the
quondam elector is proved by certain passages in another play,
The Maid of Honour, containing veiled but unmistakable allu-
sions to his fate and to James I's tardiness in assisting his son-in-
law, a slackness which had been blamed by many of his subjects
and which was repeated by Charles. Some further passages,
which, possibly, may refer to political personages and events of
his days, have been pointed out in several other of Massinger's
plays, particularly in the tragicomedy The Bond-Man, which seems
to convey a severe criticism of the royal favourite, George Villiers,
duke of Buckingham, and of the unsatisfactory state of the English
fleet. All the utterances of Massinger which are supposed to be of
a political character show him in opposition to the faction of the
court.
The same intellectual courage which made Massinger utter his
political opinions without deference to the sentiments of the
influential court party was displayed in his dealings with another
power whose favour was of the utmost importance to him: he dared
to cross the current of one of the most violent prejudices of the
public which filled the metropolitan theatres. The church of
Rome was regarded by the mass of the English nation as the most
dangerous and implacable enemy of their country, and was hated
accordingly; the English members of the Roman church were
watched suspiciously, being popularly regarded in the light of
spies belonging to that hated outlandish power; all Roman
Catholic priests had been banished from London by James I, in


## p. 150 (#168) ############################################

150
Philip Massinger
1604. The anti-Romish propaganda had also invaded the stage.
Thomas Dekker, in his allegorical play The Whore of Babylon,
strained all his powers, with the exception of his charming poetical
gift, to incense his countrymen against Rome and Spain; Barnabe
Barnes, in his tragedy The Devil's Charter, which was played
before the king, afforded Londoners an insight into all the abomi-
nations of the Roman curia, and, finally, the delightful spectacle
of a vicious and murderous pope in the clutches of the devil;
while, in Middleton's political play A Game at Chesse, Ignatius
Loyola, founder of the society of Jesus, is made to speak the
prologue and to proclaim his vices and his evil intentions con-
cerning England in the most shameless manner. In view of
this inveterate hostility, which formed an integral part of the
religious and political persuasions of most Englishmen, it needed
great strength and independence of mind to write and publish a
drama like Massinger's The Renegado. In this play a priest of
the church of Rome acts as the friend and leader of all the charac-
ters for whom the sympathy of the audience is engaged ; in all
their difficulties, they appeal to him with a confidence which is
justified by his saving them from destruction. And this benefactor
is not only a priest, but also a member of that brotherhood whom
protestants thought they had especial reasons to fear and to hate-
a Jesuit.
We do not know whether Massinger, who had been baptised
according to the rite of the Anglican communion, ever publicly con-
formed to the church of Rome: the supposition that he became a
Roman Catholic at Oxford and, in consequence of this step, lost the
protection of the earl of Pembroke, is nothing more than a guess.
But it cannot be doubted that he repeatedly showed a marked
predilection for the religious observances of the papal church.
One of his noblest women, the virgin Camiola, heroine of the
fascinating drama The Maid of Honour, being afflicted by the
discovery of the faithlessness of her lover, resolves to take the
veil—a harmonious climax to her devoted life, in adopting which
Massinger departed from his well known source, a novel in Painter's
Palace of Pleasure. The saintly Dorothea, whose martyrdom is
the subject of the tragedy The Virgin Martir, is, it is true,
a daughter of the primitive church, to whose glorification even the
anti-Popish Dekker did not object.
To the question whether the remarkable independence Mas-
singer manifested in freely expressing his political and religious
sympathies be also a distinctive quality of his dramatic art, an


## p. 151 (#169) ############################################

Massinger and Fletcher
151
affirmative answer cannot be given without some restrictions.
When Massinger entered the theatrical world of London, which
was suffering already from an excess of competition and pro-
duction, he found established in it a great tradition from whose
influence it was impossible for him to escape. We may well
suppose the sensitive soul of a young poet to have been impressed
and overwhelmed by the magnificent multitude of Shakespeare's
heroes and heroines! Not that the younger dramatists surrounding
Fletcher always pronounced the name of Shakespeare with awe
and veneration—we have proofs enough that the younger gene-
ration delighted in parodying famous passages of his works, and
that many of them were ready to extol Ben Jonson or Fletcher
in a more exalted strain than that in which they praised him—but
they could not help succumbing to the influence of his creations,
repeating and imitating him in thoughts, words, characters and
situations in numberless scenes and passages of their own dramas.
And, in Massinger's plays, we meet with many reminiscences of
this kind, though he carefully avoids anything like plagiarism.
Generally speaking, it cannot be said that he possessed an over-
scrupulous conscience in literary matters. In this respect, he was
no better and no worse than most of his contemporaries, who
remorselessly appropriated the intellectual goods of their fellows:
the general story of his successful comedy A New Way to Pay
Old Debts, for instance, he borrowed from a play of the defunct
Middleton, without deeming it necessary to allude to his model in
his dedication. But, in dealing with Shakespeare, his sentiments
seem to have been akin to the feeling tersely expressed later in
the verse: "Within that circle none durst walk but he. '
Not Shakespeare, who, searching the human soul, became
conversant with all the great problems of life-not the dead master,
whose eyes had penetrated to the core of things, became Massinger's
teacher, but the living Fletcher, the creator of a partly realistic,
and partly shadowy, world, who always aimed at stage effects and
applause, and was prepared to risk probability in order to secure
them. Undoubtedly, Massinger owed much of his own dramatic
cunning to this apprenticeship to Fletcher's cleverness in all the
technicalities of the stage—but this gain could not outweigh the
heavy loss in power. ( In reading Massinger's plays, we often be-
come aware of the contest between two very different forces, his
own serious and earnest manner, as it were, wrestling with the
injunctions of his master to lay hold of the attention of the
audience by any means, however frivolous.


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152
Philip Massinger
1
In view of the protracted joint authorship of the two dramatists,
which must have covered many years, it is difficult to say whether
Massinger transplanted Fletcherian motives and types into his own
plays. It is true that the duchess Aurelia of Siena, whom he
added to the plot of The Maid of Honour, greatly resembles her
namesake, the sister of the emperor Carinus in The Prophetesse;
that the warlike duke Lorenzo in The Bashful Lover, who is
suddenly vanquished by Matilda's beauty, strongly reminds us of
the rough old warrior Memnon in The Mad Lover, adoring on
his knees the suddenly revealed charms of the princess Calis; and
that intimate connections are noticeable between Massinger's Par-
liament of Love and Fletcher's The Little French Lawyer-but it
is possible that, in these and some similar cases, we have to assume
not a borrowing of Fletcherian motives, but only a readjustment of
his own contributions. To repeat himself was perfectly admissible
according to Massinger's artistic code.
As to his relations with either Shakespeare or Fletcher, Massinger
himself leaves us in the dark. Shakespeare he never mentions,
Fletcher but once, and then only to tell us that Fletcher never had
Such reputation and credit won
But by his honord patron, Huntingdon.
Furthermore, the name of Shakespeare's famous rival, whom many
younger poets delighted to honour—the name of Ben Jonson—never
appears in Massinger's writings. Perhaps he was not on the best of
terms with that outspoken poet. A few ironical words by Massinger
about the strange self-love of a writer who professed
that when
The critics laugh, he'll laugh at them agen
have been thought—not without some likelihood—to refer to the
angry old man who tried to console himself for the failure of one
of his last dramas, The New Inne, by bitterly inveighing against
hostile critics. As to the possible influence of Jonson's dramatic
method on the compositions of the younger poet, it is discoverable,
perhaps, in his two domestic dramas A New Way and The City-
Madam. The impressive but exaggerated personifications of the
vices of avarice, hypocrisy and pride presented in these comedies
are in the manner of Jonson's types, which were assiduously
imitated by later dramatists. In Massinger's other plays, the
traces of Jonsonian influence are very slight: the small group of
patriotic Romans in The Roman Actor calls to mind a similar
chorus in Sejanus his Fall, and the foolish wooer of The Maid
of Honour, Signior Sylli, may claim kinship with Sir Amorous


## p. 153 (#171) ############################################

Massinger's Constructive Power
153
La-Foole in The Silent Woman, by virtue of his name and some
remarks about the family of the Syllis.
The most striking feature of Massinger's individual art, undoubt-
edly, is to be found in his great constructive power. The structure
of his best plays is admirable in the severity of its lines and in
the wise economy shown in the use of his materials. In most cases,
he was content with working out a single action; the mixture of
plots which many of his brother poets preferred, and of which
Shakespeare's King Lear had been the great example, seems to
have had no attraction for a dramatist whose intellect favoured
clearness above all other poetical charms. Some of the dramas of his
contemporaries resemble mazes in whose artfully interwoven paths
both writers and spectators ran the risk of losing themselves—a
danger which Richard Brome, for instance, perceived and tried to
avoid by drawing attention to particularly difficult complications
by an explicit remark of one of his dramatis personae; Massinger's
best plays convey the impression of being well built and ample
halls, in which we move with a feeling of perfect security.
That he was a severe critic of his own labours is proved by the
clear progress to be noted in the construction of his plots in
the course of years. The Unnaturall Combat, which the author
calls an old work in his dedication, and which appears to be
a free rendering of the story of the crimes of the Cenci family,
has, no doubt, a central figure in Malefort, the destroyer of his own
children; yet it contains not one but two separate tragedies. First,
the tragedy of young Malefort, the son, who revenges the death of
his mother and is himself killed by her murderer, his father; and
then, the tragedy of the daughter, hunted to death by the father's
incestuous passion. In what probably is his second tragedy, The
Duke of Millaine, we meet with a striking proof that the dramatist
had not yet learned to economise his subject : the fate of his
heroine reaches the tragic climax at the end of the fourth act,
so that he was obliged to fill the fifth act with a new action, not
clearly hinted at before, a brother's revenge for the injury done
to his sister. It is true that, in the last tragedy composed by
Massinger alone, The Roman Actor, Paris, the actor, falls a
victim to the jealousy of the emperor also in the fourth act;
nevertheless, the poet was entitled to speak of this drama as
'the most perfect birth of his Minerva,' because the fate of the
player was not his chief object : he wished to present the tragedy
of the bloodthirsty madness of the Roman Caesars, personified in
Domitian, whose ruin is prepared and effected in the fifth act.


## p. 154 (#172) ############################################

154
Philip Massinger
Our admiration of Massinger's power of dramatic construction
is further heightened, if we come to look at the raw materials at
his disposal. Nothing, for instance, could be more interesting
than to observe how, in The Roman Actor, the process of blending
the accounts of historians, of Suetonius and Dio Cassius principally,
results in well arranged scenes in which no trace of patchwork is
to be discovered. Not less cunningly the plot of The Renegado
is pieced together out of different works of Cervantes. That
Massinger's predilection for a single action is not to be explained
by the inability to marshal and, finally, to unite a greater number
of figures, is demonstrated by the lively scenes of his Parliament
of Love, for the intrigues in which he availed himself of motives
drawn from Martial d'Auvergne, Shakespeare, Marston and, prob-
ably, also from Middleton. It must be confessed, however, that,
in this case, the fusion is not flawless, Leonora's senseless cruelty
showing that the dramatist's wish to use a striking episode of a
Marstonian drama was stronger than his respect for what the laws
of psychology allow to be possible.
In obedience to the taste of his time, Massinger twice trans-
planted the action of his plays from the localities named in his
sources to the favourite country of the Elizabethan dramatists,
Italy, and, in both cases, with entire success. Without knowledge
of his authorities, it would be impossible to find out that the duke
of Milan and his wife Marcelia, killed by her husband's jealousy,
have been substituted for Herod, king of the Jews, and his wife
Mariamne; or that the story told in his charming comedy The
Great Duke of Florence, with its variation of the motive of the
treacherous friend, is a transformation of an old legend rooted in
the soil of England.
Many of Massinger's independent additions to the stories in
his sources are also well calculated to deepen the impression left
by his works. For a few of his plays, no literary source has been so
far traced; but it would be rash to assert that he entirely invented
any of his plots. A far more striking sign of a certain weakness
in inventive power is his tendency to repeat himself in his tech-
nical artifices and in the means used for eking out his plots. The
necessary revelation of a hidden passion is frequently attained by
the simple stratagem of letting a conversation between lovers be
overheard by their enemies. The passionate attempt of Antoninus
to waken the flame of an earthly love in Dorothea's bosom is
overheard by his father and by the princess in love with the
youth (The Virgin Martir); Cleora and Marullo are surprised
a


## p. 155 (#173) ############################################

Massinger's Self-repetitions
155
in prison (The Bond-Man); Donusa and Vitelli, Domitia and Paris
are watched by the Turkish princes and Domitian respectively (The
Renegado and The Roman Actor); the rivals of Hortensio listen
to his decisive talk with Matilda (The Bashful Lover). Also, in
other emergencies, the timehonoured artifice of the listener is
freely resorted to. Another of Massinger's favourite situations is
the introduction of one of his male characters with a book in his
hand, like Hamlet, indulging in some short philosophical specula-
tion. By way of amplifying his plot, he repeatedly brings in a
brother revenging a wrong done to his sister. In the last act of
The Duke of Millaine, we are surprised by the statement that the
ultimate scope of Francisco's perfidies was to punish Sforza as the
seducer of his sister Eugenia; Marullo-Pisander acts the part of a
slave in Syracuse only to approach Leosthenes, the faithless lover
of his sister Statilia (The Bond-Man); Vitelli risks his life among
the Turks to liberate or to revenge his sister Paulina, robbed by
the Renegado (in the play of that name). The deserted woman
herself repeatedly appears as the servant of the new object of her
faithless lover's affection: Statilia serves Cleora (The Bond-Man),
Madame Beaupré the clever and resolute Bellisant (The Parlia-
ment of Love).
In view of this inclination of Massinger to repeat himself, we
are not surprised to find, also, that many of his dramatis personae
resemble each other in a pronounced manner; the theory of the
typical characters of a dramatiststands confirmed by many of
his figures. The most typical of his heroines is the passionate
woman who falls violently in love at first sight and runs to the
embraces of her beloved without any reserve.
This class of
women is most characteristically represented by the Turkish
princess Donusa, who offers herself to the unsuspicious Vitelli
and persists in her wooing until he becomes the victim of her
seductive charms, notwithstanding his Christian scruples about her
being an infidel. With the same self-abandonment, the empress
Domitia makes love to the handsome player Paris. Nor can
Aurelia, the duchess of Siena, in The Maid of Honour, who, at
the first sight of young Bertoldo, forgets all about her princely
dignity, and claims him for herself, to his intense surprise and to the
great dissatisfaction of her court, be rated higher than her heathen
sisters, though she retains at least an outward show of decency.
Less objectionable, but not less masterful, appears this form of the
· See, on the subject of typical characters,' Schröer, A. , Über Titus Andronicus
(Marburg, 1891), passim.
.
3


## p. 156 (#174) ############################################

156
Philip Massinger
1
passion of love in the character of another duchess, Fiorinda of
Urbino, in The Great Duke of Florence, who abjectly endeavours
to induce the unwilling Sanazarro to take herself and her duchy,
though she knows that he loves another, the charming Lidia.
Another copy of the same type is the inconstant Almira in
A Very Woman, who obstinately refuses to listen favourably to
the wooing of the prince of Tarent, but, later, when he crosses her
way once more in the habit of a slave, is immediately charmed
with him to such a degree that she, the daughter of the viceroy of
Sicily, does not hesitate to offer a nocturnal meeting to him,
a slave. Massinger himself so much affected scenes in which a
woman acts the part of the wooer, that he introduced a similar
situation in a play where there was no pressing need for it:
queen Honoria in The Picture seeks to seduce the knight Mathias,
only in order to be able to refuse him, and, in this manner, to
punish him for having praised the beauty and the chastity of his
wife.
A somewhat subtler art of character painting we observe in
Massinger's delineation of the nature of those women who are not
the powerless victims of a sudden passion. Nevertheless, it cannot
be denied that the utterances and the behaviour of his virtuous
women often reveal that, in drawing female characters, he could
rarely escape from the region of the senses. But, though most of
Massinger's women are of the earth, earthy, we must not forget
that he was able to create at least two women in another mould:
the chaste Camiola and the lovable Lidia. Camiola, the Maid of
Honour, deserves this appellation, though, perhaps, the poet
impaired the nobleness of her presence and of her actions by two
superfluous additions : the violence of her refusal of an unwelcome,
boisterous wooer-whose bodily defects she criticises in a strain
approaching, though by no means equalling, the invectives which
the passionate Donusa hurls at the head of the unfortunate basha
of Aleppo when he comes to court her-and the cautious contract
(taken from the source of the play) by which Bertoldo, to liberate
whom Camiola spent a fortune, is placed under an obligation to
marry her. Perfectly delightful is Lidia, the youthful heroine
of The Great Duke of Florence. In her, everything is charm-
ing: the simplicity with which she talks of her love for prince
Giovanni; her naïve conviction that the fiercest enemy 'would let
fall his weapon' when looking on the sweetness of her lover ; her
anxious pleading at the feet of the duke, who is righteously angry
with his deceitful nephew, and her trembling readiness to sacrifice


## p. 157 (#175) ############################################

Massinger's Women and Men
157
her own hopes to the happiness of the prince. Nothing could be
more winning than the manner of her receiving the fatal, letter of
her boy lover: she kisses it, she scarcely dares to hurt it by
breaking the seal fastened by the beloved hand-even Shake-
speare's Julia did not prattle more tenderly when kissing and
piecing together the fragments of the letter of her beloved Proteus.
With this exception, a comparative survey of the women of
Shakespeare and Massinger is the surest means for convincing us
how rapidly the moral character of the English stage had changed
since the days of the greater poet. The effrontery of Donusa and
Massinger's other women of the same stamp would suffice to indicate
the rise of a taste demanding stronger stimulants ; but he went far
beyond the loss of dignity and of delicacy of feeling which they
exhibit. He created the Syracusan Corsica, the lewd wife of old
Creon, who tries to seduce her stepson (The Bond-Man); Iolante,
who, in the absence of her husband, is ready to accept the first
handsome stranger as lover (The Guardian)-not to speak of bawds
like Calipso in the same play, or the drunken hag Borachia in A
Very Woman. We are but rarely allowed to forget that Massinger
is separated from Shakespeare by Fletcher, whose plays had accus-
tomed the public to the open licence of women.
Massinger's male characters, as a rule, are more interesting
than his women. If we except one short scene of the patriotic
Cleora, his women think and talk of nothing but the dominating
passion of love in its different gradations; while their lovers, though
meeting their desires, are yet, at the same time, not rarely made
the interpreters of the views of the author. The Venetian Vitelli,
whose virtue is too weak to resist the temptations of the infidel
Donusa, is, by the admonitions of his ghostly counsellor, the
Jesuit Francisco, filled with a repentance which rises to religious
ecstasy, so that, in the end, he even aspires to the glory of the
death of a martyr, becoming the most eloquent exponent of
Massinger's religious feelings. Still more distinctly, we hear the
voice of the poet himself in one of the speeches of Paris, the
Roman actor, in a splendid apology for the stage and its poets
and players. Paris, 'the favourite of the Roman public, is cited
before the senate, being accused of satirical attacks on persons of
rank and of being a libeller against the state and Caesar. ' The
gist of the actor's defence is that he and his companions cannot
help it, if the conscience of the spectators is shaken by what is
done and said on the stage. The energetic flow of this oratio
pro domo, one of Massinger's rhetorical masterpieces, and its


## p. 158 (#176) ############################################

158
Philip Massinger
superfluousness from the dramatic point of view—for it stands
quite outside the action of the tragedy-show how willingly he
availed himself of the opportunity offered by the part of the actor
to speak against the detractors of his art in general, and against
those ‘Catos of the stage' of whose persecutions he bitterly
complains in one of his rare prologues.
In several plays, the passion of Massinger's heroes takes
the form of violent, though groundless, jealousy. The jealous
whims of Leosthenes irritate the noble Cleora and, finally, estrange
her from him ; Mathias doubts the fidelity of his wife; the sus-
picions of Theodosius, the Emperor of the East, threaten the life
of Athenais ; Marcelia, the proud wife of Sforza, is murdered by
the selfish passion of her husband. A far more imposing figure
than these egoists, tormented by their own folly, is the hero of
the tragedy The Fatall Dowry, the sombre Charolais, who kills his
adulterous wife and her gallant, and himself falls a victim to his
revenge.
Besides these men who, fighting the battle of life, are not
entirely absorbed by the passion of love-for, even in the sketch of
the murderous Sforza, much stress is laid by the poet on his war-
like qualities and the astuteness of the Italian politician who,
standing between the French king and the emperor, knows how
to reconcile his loyalty with his advantage—we find among
Massinger's lovers, also, the conventional types of the contem-
porary drama : the devoted lover who lives on the smile of
his lady, such as Ladislaus, the humble husband of the proud
Honoria, Caldorio and the over-bashful Hortensio, and young
libertines like Adorio and Alonzo, whose conversion, usually, is
as incredible as it is sudden. Massinger's most attractive boy
lover, who really has no other hopes, as yet, than 'to stonden in
his lady grace,' and who utters his feelings with charming fresh-
ness, is prince Giovanni, the 'north-star' to whom Lidia looks up
adoringly.
Guilty women of the stamp of lady Macbeth and the two
daughters of king Lear, in whose lives not the passion of love but
a stormy, and, if need be, sanguinary, ambition is the dominant
influence, are not to be found in Massinger's dramas ; only his
men appear capable of conceiving and executing criminal plans.
His villains, generally, are monsters of the darkest dye; they
resemble each other in being free of any redeeming quality.
Even if they act as avengers, they display so much baseness of
mind that the wrong suffered by them is forgotten in our indigna-


## p. 159 (#177) ############################################

His Types of Villains
159
tion at their perfidiousness. Francisco, the treacherous favourite
of the duke of Milan, is spurred on by his desire to punish Sforza
for having dishonoured his sister, an impulse of which we are
informed much too late, long after he has forfeited all our
sympathy by the wickedness of the means he uses to gain his
end. First of all, he tries to seduce Sforza's wife, and, as he is
foiled in this attempt by the resistance of the duchess, he accuses
her of having made love to him, and succeeds in instigating her
jealous and credulous husband to kill her. Finally, after having
been bitterly reviled by his sister for cautiously sparing the life of
her seducer, he enters the ducal palace in the disguise of a Jewish
doctor and covers the lips and hands of the corpse of Marcelia
with poisonous paint, so that Sforza is killed by kissing her:
from beginning to end he acts the part of a perfidious coward,
carefully abstaining from any direct attack on his mighty adver-
sary himself. A still more despicable villain is Montreville, who,
pretending to be the friend of old Malefort, avenges himself on him
for injuries borne in silence during many years by dishonouring
his innocent daughter Theocrine. As to the murderous and in-
cestuous Malefort himself, one would feel inclined to regard him
as an impossible monster, an isolated creature of the poet's
fantasy, did not this very isolation strengthen our belief that
Massinger's freely treated model was a historical personage, an
Italian villain—that Francesco Cenci who had been killed, by
murderers hired by his own daughter, some twenty years before the
composition of Massinger's tragedy. Through the enormity of his
crimes, Malefort's dark shape assumes gigantic dimensions, and
we are not astonished that the poet himself felt the need of
annihilating his monstrous creation, not by mortal agents, but by
the direct interference of Heaven itself.
Massinger's imperial malefactor, the bloodthirsty tyrant Domi-
tian, does not stand so entirely beyond the limits of humanity as
Malefort. He becomes vulnerable by his infatuation for the
profligate Domitia, and this one human weakness proves fatal to
him : he spares her life, forfeited by her adulterous passion for
Paris, and when, later, infuriated by her imprecations at the
murder of the player, he resolves to kill her, it is too late;
Domitia herself heads the crowd of his assassins. By a skilful
arrangement of the historical background, the dramatist succeeds
in making us believe in the life-likeness of his tyrant as the
natural outcome of a cruel
age.
These criminals, who are finally struck down by the nemesis of
1


## p. 160 (#178) ############################################

160
Philip Massinger
their evil deeds, are the central figures of tragedies whose action
lies in the far past and in foreign lands. But, even in those two
comedies whose dramatis personae are intended to represent
countrymen and contemporaries of the poet, we meet with two
great villains : with the heartless, usurer Sir Giles Overreach in
A New Way to Pay Old Debts, and with the hypocrite Luke Frugal
in The City-Madam. Sir Giles Overreach, who tries to bring his
spendthrift nephew, one of the victims of his extortions, to the
gallows, who commands his amiable daughter to offer herself to
the lord to whom he wishes to marry her, and who boasts of his
cruelties towards his debtors, be they widows or orphans, becomes
so tremendous a villain, that, in order to free humanity of the
fiend, the conclusion of the comedy-as, indeed, the whole con-
ception of this ruthless character-touches the borders of tragedy.
Deluded in all his ambitious hopes, the infuriated usurer goes mad.
In the case of Luke Frugal, who has not hesitated to cause the
betrayal of the women entrusted to his care-the wife and two
daughters of his brother—the poet contents himself with stripping
him of all his splendour and with exposing him to the contempt
of all around him. In these two domestic comedies, one of the
most glaring defects of Massinger's dramatic world, its frequent
want of truth, strikes us most forcibly. The usurer's bragging
proclamation of his vices and his crimes, which reminds us of the
equally impressive and equally unlikely self-accusation of Chaucer's
pardoner, is quite as incredible as is the obtuseness of the insidious
Luke, when confronted by the gross deception practised on him.
The sober light of day is unfavourable to Massinger's characters;
they stand in need of the romantic twilight of the past, in order
to gain a certain, but too often limited, likeness to life.
As to Massinger's comical scenes, in which the male element
again preponderates, his tragedies indicate an evident tendency to
re-establish the purity of the tragic style. In what probably was
his earliest tragedy, The Unnaturall Combat, a comical character
appears in the person of Belgarde, a needy and ever hungry soldier,
a
who, at a sudden favourable turn of his fortunes, is overwhelmed
by claims of paternity something like Molière's Monsieur de
Pourceaugnac; but his chief scene is in harmony with the serious
tenor of the whole work. Finding himself excluded from a banquet
in the governor's palace on account of his threadbare old suit, he
comes to it in the habit which he had worn for the welfare of his
country 'in the heat and fervour of a bloody fight'-in his armour,
eloquently and bitterly blaming the ingratitude of the world which


## p. 161 (#179) ############################################

Tragicomic Characters and Scenes
161
lets soldiers starve in times of peace. In The Duke of Millaine,
the report of the jailor as to the effect of a whipping on some of
his former prisoners is more satirical than comical ; and in The
Roman Actor the dignity of tragedy is never disturbed by an
attempt to raise a laugh. In the comedies, on the other hand,
the usual stock of servants and gulls, of pert pages and humorous
old men is to be found. There appear Calandrino, the boorish
servant, aping the manners of the court; Gazet, the ambitious
servant, who aspires to the office of an eunuch ; and many others.
The slaves of Syracuse, who, in The Bond-Man, rebel against their
oppressors, are represented as ridiculous and abject creatures,
with that curious indifference to the sufferings and rights of the
people frequently to be noted in the drama of the period. Two
of Massinger's comical old men, the voracious and venal judge
Greedy in A New Way, and the courtier Cuculo, who, in view of
his frequent hints at his statesmanship, appears to be a weak
reproduction of the Polonius type, are farcical, while the free-
spoken Eubulus and the merry Durazzo sometimes speak very
much to the purpose between their jokes: Eubulus, like Belgarde,
in favour of the neglected soldiers for whom the poet, patriotically
anxious about the defence of his country, puts in a good word on
every occasion; Durazzo, chanting the praise of healthy country
life and of the delights of the chase, especially of falconry, of which
‘royal sport' he gives a very pleasing description.
One cannot help observing with what persistency the satire
with which dramatists frequently combined the fun of their lighter
scenes is by Massinger aimed at the inmates of the courts of
princes. In two of his plays, depraved courtiers, who, persuaded
of the force of their own fascinations, think the seduction of women
an easy task, become the victims of practical jokes and are ex-
posed to general contempt. The exaggerated importance attached
to exterior appearance and to more or less worthless ceremonies,
the frequent neglect of true merit, the ridiculous pride shown by
noblemen of the last edition'—these and many other unpleasant
peculiarities of court life are referred to by the poet repeatedly,
and with a force of expression which might lead us to think that
his bitterness was caused by disagreeable personal experiences.
Other objects of Massinger's satire are the projector and the
monopolist, the empiric and the astrologer. Now and then, he
attacks his countrymen in general, dishing up once more the
well worn complaints about their fondness for hard drinking and
for aping in their dress and manners outlandish, particularly
11
EL VI.
CH, VÍ.


## p. 162 (#180) ############################################

162
Philip Massinger
8
French, fashions; and, once, he even permits a connoisseur of
human wares, a slave merchant, the remark that all English
people, men and women, are stark mad—remembering, very likely,
one of the best known jokes of the grave digger in Hamlet. Not-
withstanding such occasional humorous criticisms, we are made
to feel that the poet himself was proud of being an Englishman,
At the end of an uncomplimentary conversation of some Italian
servants about the gross feeding and the correspondingly gross
understanding of Englishmen stands the telling line: 'They can
fight and that's their all,' and Bertoldo, the faithless lover of The
Maid of Honour, utters a sincere panegyric on England, the
empress of the European isles,' though it is true that we can
discover a melancholy inflection in the poet's voice, the eulogy
referring not to the present but to a past state of things.
Concerning the political situation of his own days, Massinger
shared the dissatisfaction felt by many patriotic contemporaries.
It is noteworthy that Massinger's satirical allusions avoid two
themes frequently treated by other dramatists of his time: neither
satirical remarks of a literary kind, parodies of passages of the
works of older writers, nor violent invectives to the address of the
irreconcilable enemies of the stage, the puritans, are to be found
in his plays, the nearest approach to such an attack being the
statement of the jailor in The Duke of Millaine, that a sectary
who would not yield to any argument of reason was made a 'fine
pulpit-man' by a trussing of his haunches. Probably, Massinger,
who was himself prone to religious meditation, admired in secret
the moral rectitude of the puritans and their energy of purpose;
he may even have felt oppressed by the consciousness that he was
helping to heighten the animosity of their adversaries by partici-
pating in the scurrility and viciousness then characteristic of the
stage. As it is, his comic dialogue abounds in coarse innuendos,
Massinger's comic characters, advisedly, perorate in blank verse;
the quacksalver, however, and the star-gazer are allowed to an-
nounce their wisdom in prose, possibly because it would have been
a difficult task to versify smoothly the strange, half-Latin terms of
their pseudoscientific galimatias.
As to versification and poetic diction, Massinger's mastership
is indisputable; his dramas contain many passages in which the
beauty of the style equals the vigour of the thought. He is a
great orator, excelling in speeches in which, after the fashion of
lawyers, speakers have to defend some particular position and to
put their case in the most favourable light. Belgarde, insisting


## p. 163 (#181) ############################################

His Style
a
163
on the merits of the soldier; Sforza, endeavouring to convince the
emperor that he, too, might find him a faithful and useful ally, not-
withstanding his loyalty towards the French king; Timoleon of
Corinth, soundly rating the Syracusans for having shamefully
neglected the means of defence of their country ; Paris, in his
apology for the stage ; Lidia, in her pathetic pleading for her
lover ; Athenais, appealing to the compassion of Pulcheria—these
and many other heroes and heroines of Massinger’s are never at a
loss for powerful, convincing or moving words when in critical
situations. The mechanical tricks of the Euphuistic style are, for
Massinger, a thing of the past; his use of alliteration is very
discreet, in most cases undoubtedly unconscious, and the insertion
of Latin words or quotations, in which the older dramatists de-
lighted, is a great rarity with him—in these respects, he strikes us
as a far more modern writer than his predecessors and many of
his contemporaries. But, on the other hand, it cannot be denied
that he also has his peculiar blemishes and tricks of style, and,
among them, one which is very obtrusive and for which he has
been frequently censured-a mania for repeating himself. He
possesses a considerable store of set phrases, metaphors and similes,
which he strews around on every occasion without troubling him-
self to vary and individualise his expressions. Especially numerous
and monotonous are his classical illustrations : Aeson and Medea,
Hippolytus, Diana and Phaedra, Pasiphaë and her bull, Alcides
and his poisoned shirt, and a great many other figures and objects
of classical mythology continually remind us of Massinger's having
received a classical education, a fact which is also recalled to us by
the frequent translations of famous passages of ancient authors
noticeable in his verse.
On the other hand, many of Massinger’s similes, however book-
ish, mirror genuinely English impressions, originally received from
the contemplation of the sea, its coasts and the life of sailors.
The foam-covered rock, the stream which loses its name in the
ocean, the ship, returning or outward bound, the small boat
wrecked by the weight of its own sails, and many other maritime
incidents, are frequently mentioned. In certain situations, which
repeat themselves in his dramas, stereotyped formulas are sure
to be used: if a beautiful lady is to be won, Massinger's person-
ages never forget to talk of her virgin fort'; the charms of his
passionate ladies, when they take the wooing upon themselves, are
so powerful that even an ascetic hermit would be at a loss how to
resist them; Lidia and Camiola, both of them in love with men of
6
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164
Philip Massinger
a higher social position, talk of their north-star and of the impossi-
bility of the wren's building near the eagle. Too often the tinsel of
these colourless phrases reminds us of the haste of the dramatist,
sacrificing one of the greatest charms of any poem, its freshness
of expression, to the wish to have done with his work.
Massinger's fatal fondness for conventional repetitions, which
has been pointed out in the situations, characters, thoughts and
words of his plays, apprises us of the limits of his merits as a
dramatic artist. Notwithstanding our readiness to admire the
firmness of his construction and the splendour of his diction,
we are too often offended by the monotony of his characters
and by the narrow range of their ideas; and his treatment
of them exhibits hardly any process of development.
playwright, it is true, he seeks to perfect himself in the tech-
nical part of his art; as a psychologist, he is too much inclined
to remain on the surface, from beginning to end. We feel
that the dramatist does not sufficiently identify himself with
his creations, that he does not live in them, that they are
formed more from the outside than from the inside. In con-
sequence of this coldness of their maker, we do not recognise in
his figures living beings of our own flesh and blood; too many
of them remain cleverly formed and ably managed theatrical
puppets. It is a great pity that the straitened circumstances of
his life, which obliged him to work rapidly, prevented him from
devoting a greater measure of love and care to the delineation
of his characters. That he would have been able to rouse them
to an intenser, fuller life, is impressed upon us as we look on the
thoroughly lovable Lidia, on the pure presence of Camiola and
at some of his secondary characters, as, for instance, the faithful
Adorni, whose love for Camiola is deeper than the selfish desire to
win her for himself.
As to the reception of Massinger's plays by the public of his
own days, we know very little. In his dedications, he repeatedly
laments the neglect shown by his contemporaries to poetry in
general, mentioning, with bitterness in one instance, his own
despised studies’; and the cutting remark that he presumes his
Roman Actor will, in consequence of the severity and height of
the subject distaste such as are only affected with jigs and ribaldry,'
indicates, perhaps, that this tragedy had not been successful on
the stage. On the other hand, he alludes to the friendly reception
of The Bond-Man; and, in the dedication of The Picture, one of
his most entertaining dramas, he is able to mention the general


## p. 165 (#183) ############################################

Contemporary and Posthumous Reputation 165
approbation the play had found at its presentment. Of prologues
expressive of his sentiments, we have but few, because, with cha-
racteristic, and, in this case, very justifiable, conservatism, he
strongly objected to this innovation, not falling in with it before
the performance of his tragicomedy The Emperour of the East,
printed in 1631, the first prologue to which begins with a few
angry words about the imperiousness of custom. Nevertheless,
we are indebted to his poems of this kind for a few noteworthy
biographical details. In the two prologues composed for The
Emperour of the East, he complains of the censures of those
who delight
To misapply whatever he shall write,
and of
the rage
>
And envy of some Catos of the stage
by whom 'this poor work' had suffered; while, in the prologue of
The Guardian, he informs us of the failure of two of his dramatic
ventures, which was followed by a silence of two years. We are
ignorant of the nature of those two unfortunate plays, because many
of Massinger's dramas were never printed and the manuscripts
were inadvertently destroyed by Warburton's cook.
The posthumous popular fame of Massinger is chiefly based on
his comedy A New Way to Pay Old Debts, which has kept the
stage till recently, the brilliant part of the bold usurer captivating
many famous actors. In a more indirect way, the appreciation of
the dramatic power of the tragedy The Fatall Dowry, printed as a
joint production of Massinger and Field, but, undoubtedly, chiefly
Massinger's work, has been proved by the adaptations of later
poets : by Nicholas Rowe's tragedy The Fair Penitent, composed
in 1703, which did more for the preservation of Rowe's name as
a dramatist than all his independent plays; and by the recent
successful version of Beer-Hofmann, entitled Der Graf von
Charolais, which revived the memory of Massinger all over
Germany. The first traces of his influence on the German stage
date back to his lifetime: in 1626, an imitation of his and
Dekker's dramatisation of the legend of Dorothea was performed
at Dresden, where his attractive Great Duke of Florence also
appeared on the boards in 1661. Later, Massinger attracted the
attention of the poets of the romantic school of Germany as one of
the most fascinating of Shakespeare's successors: count Baudissin
translated several of his plays, and, within the last decades, German
translators have repcatedly had recourse to him.


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CHAPTER VII
TOURNEUR AND WEBSTER
THE two dramatists who are to be considered in the present
chapter have certain points in common. Both, at their best,
display a peculiarly sombre genius. The tragedies of both belong
to the same school; and both are utterly unknown to us, except
by their writings. In point of date, Tourneur would seem slightly
to precede Webster. And, for this reason, as well as for others
which are more material, it will be convenient to take him first.
Of Cyril Tourneur's life, we know nothing beyond the dates at
which his various plays and poems were published. They are as
follows: The Transformed Metamorphosis, 1600; A Funeral
Poem on Sir Francis Vere, 1609; A Griefe on the Death of
Prince Henry, 1613; and his two dramas, The Revengers Tragoedie,
1607 and The Atheists Tragedie, 1611! It should be noted that
two of these, the poem on Vere and The Revengers Tragoedie, have
no name on the title-page, and that nothing more than tradition
connects them with the name of Tourneur. There is a tepid
reference to the author, 'as not to be despised nor too much
praised,' by an anonymous contemporary; and that is all.
On his poems, it is not necessary to dwell. None of them has
any merit; and the most elaborate of them, The Metamorphosis,
is written in that uncouth jargon which had been brought into
fashion by Marston in his satires (1598), and which is assailed by
Jonson in Poetaster. It is, moreover, an involved allegory, the key
to which is lost, but which Churton Collins ingeniously interpreted
as a cryptic reference to the fortunes of Essex.
We pass at once to the two dramas, for it is by these alone that
Tourneur survives. A question has been raised as to the relative
priority of their composition. The order of publication makes a
presumption in favour of The Revengers Tragoedie ; but it is a
presumption which might easily yield to substantial arguments on
the other side. The only argument, however, which has been
brought forward is the inferiority, or, as it has been called, the
1 A tragicomedy, The Nobleman, acted at court in 1613, is now lost.


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Tourneur's Two Tragedies
167
'immaturity,' of The Atheist's Tragedie. Such an argument is
manifestly perilous and, if applied to the works of other writers,
would lead to curious results. On the other side must be set the
fact that The Revengers Tragoedie, though it abounds in striking
passages and scenes, is singularly lacking in originality of concep-
tion; that it belongs to a type of tragedy which had been in vogue
for many years before its appearance; that, in fact, it is a rearrange-
ment of the material already treated by Marston in Antonios
Revenge (1602). The Atheist's Tragedie, on the other hand,
though, doubtless, inferior in some respects, is strikingly original in
its central conception. And it would seem improbable that, after
following his own path with much boldness, the dramatist should,
in a later play, have fallen back obediently into the well worn rut.
The same conclusion is suggested by the metre, which, in The
Revengers Tragoedie, is exceptionally regular, while, in The Atheist's
Tragedie, it is inarked by what can only be called an abuse of the
light endings which abound in the later plays of Shakespeare. We
have other grounds for saying that Tourneur was a zealous student
of Shakespeare; and it is surely more natural to suppose that, after
the example of his master, he passed from the stricter to the looser
system, than from the looser to the stricter. The point is by no
means certain. On the whole, however, it would appear likely that
the order of publication is, also, the order of composition; in other
words, that The Revengers Tragoedie was written in or before 1607,
and that The Atheist's Tragedie falls some time between it and 1611.
Neither play can be said to show much trace of dramatic power.
The plots are poor in themselves, and one of them is largely bor-
rowed. The characters are, at best, little more than types; and, in
one instance, at any rate, the revenger's mother, the type is hardly
improved by an incredible conversion. The most original character
in the whole gallery is that of D'Amville, the atheist. But even he
has a fatal resemblance to the Machiavellian monster who, from
the time of Kyd and Marlowe, had been a familiar figure to the
Elizabethan playgoer. The other characters are either puppets or
incarnate abstractions of the various virtues and vices. The wanton
personages of The Atheist's Tragedie are frankly caricatures. It is
as poet that Tourneur claims our attention: a poet whose imagina-
tion is poisoned by the sense of universal vanity and corruption, but
who lights up this festering material with flashes of high genius, and
who is capable, at rare moments, of rising to visions of true beauty,
and even grace : ‘To have her train borne up, and her soul Trail
1 See ante, chap. II.


## p. 168 (#186) ############################################

168
Tourneur and Webster
in the dirt' is an instance of the one; the alleged discovery of
Charlemont's body by Borachio, of the other. And, to the former,
at any rate, many parallels could be brought. His imagination
needed a dramatic matter to kindle it; but, when kindled, it
followed its own path and paid little heed to any but the purely
formal requirements of the drama. To him, a tragedy was an
outlet for the expression of his bitter judgment on man and his
essentially gloomy view of human life. To this, all personages, all
,
incidents, are subordinated. Of this, all that is memorable in his
dramas is the imaginative symbol. In these points, he presents a
certain analogy to Webster, but an analogy which, at the same
time, is a faint reflection and a caricature.
The outward life of John Webster is as much a blank to us as
that of Tourneur. The years of his birth and death are, alike,
unknown to us. It may be conjectured, from the known dates,
that he was born in the decade 1570_80; and he must have
survived at least until 1624, the year of the production of the
Monuments of Honor. Further than that we cannot go. It
would be unsafe to accept the statement-not made until 1698,
and not confirmed by the parish registers—that he was clerk of
St Andrew's, Holborn. And the one outward fact with which we
are left-a fact recorded on the title-page of the Monuments of
Honor—is that he was a member of the Merchant Taylors'
company. With this, we must rest content.
His literary activity falls, naturally, into three periods: the
first, that of collaboration and apprenticeship (1602—7); the
second, that of the two great tragedies (1610 to 1614); the third,
that of the tragicomedies and, probably, of Appius and Virginia,
beginning about 1620, the probable date of The Devils Lav-
case, and ending at a time unknown. It will be well to take
each of these periods singly, and then to consider the charac-
teristics of his genius as a whole.
During the first period, Webster produced no independent
work. He was engaged in collaboration with other dramatists,
particularly Dekker; and, owing to a peculiarity of his genius,
his individuality was entirely merged in that of his fellow
workers. After joining with Middleton and others in two plays,
Caesar's Fall and The Two Harpies', which have perished, he
is found in partnership with Dekker, Heywood and Wentworth
Smith over a play entered as Lady Jane? , and immediately
followed by a Second Part (27 October), apparently from the
1 See Henslowe's diary, 22, 29 May 1602.
3 Ibid. 15 October 1602.


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