On the other hand, Boyle arrives at some startling results when he investigates the works of Fletcher.[87] He attributes to Massinger parts of Thierry and Theodoret, The Queen of Corinth, The Knight of Malta, The Custom of the Country, The Little French Lawyer, The Fair Maid of the Inn, and of several other plays.[88]
It may appear strange that in order to estimate Massinger we should have to read Fletcher as well; but to this the scientific study of English brings us.[89] Boyle [pg 022] declares that “we ought in future to have no more editions of Beaumont and Fletcher, but the plays of Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger arranged in nine groups.”[90] The verdict of experts cannot be disregarded in this matter; there is a real danger that Massinger's merits will be underrated if we do not attempt to estimate the share which he took in writing the plays attributed to Fletcher. His friend Sir Aston Cokaine might have done us a great service here, but, unfortunately, he missed his opportunity. In a poem[91] relating to Shirley's edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's works published in 1647,[92] he points out that the title is inaccurate for two reasons: first, because many of the plays were written after Beaumont's death; secondly, because Massinger wrote parts of some of them; it is a great pity that he did not tell us which these plays were.
But worse still remains behind; if we are to believe Boyle, it is practically certain that Massinger and Fletcher wrote Henry VIII[93] and The Two Noble [pg 023] Kinsmen.[94] It must be pointed out that there are still good critics who attribute a large part of Henry VIII to Shakspere, and a small part of The Two Noble Kinsmen. It would take us too far from our subject to enter in detail on these two difficult problems.
Then, in the third place, there are the plays that are lost. In the eighteenth century there was a certain John Warburton, F.R.S. and F.S.A., Somerset herald, who collected no fewer than fifty-five genuine unpublished dramas of the golden period, which he handed over to the care of his cook until he could find someone to publish them. The cook appropriated these plays leaf by leaf for coverings for her pastry, and a certain number of Massinger's—possibly as many as ten—perished among them. Here are the names of some of them: The Forced [pg 024] Lady, a tragedy; The Noble Choice, a comedy; The Wandering Lovers, a comedy; Philenzo and Hippolita, a tragi-comedy.[95]
It may be a consolation when we grieve over this disaster[96] to reflect that many of the fifty-five plays may not have been worth reading; eight of them were early works of Massinger's, and may have been immature or even unsuccessful. There is a presumption in favour of this supposition, for his more famous plays appeared separately in quarto, and most of them can still be procured from dealers in that form; we must suppose that Mr. Warburton had only what are called actors'—i.e., manuscript—copies. If a play never attained the distinction of being printed there may have been some defect which militated against its success.
Colonel Cunningham in his edition gives us the names of thirty-seven plays in all from Massinger's pen; if the many be added to this total in which he joined with other writers, we have a considerable literary output for a life of fifty-five years.
Massinger, like Shakspere, fell into disfavour after the Restoration, when Beaumont and Fletcher carried everything before them. We learn from Malone's Preface[97] that The Bondman was acted in 1661 and The Virgin Martyr on January 10th, 1662; The Renegado on June 6th in the same year. Pepys saw The Virgin Martyr, and liked it,[98] more, however, for the music than the words. Dryden and Jeremy Collier never mention Massinger. Selections from The Guardian appeared in prose form, with insertions from A Very Woman, in [pg 025] 1680, under the title Love Lost in the Dark, or the Drunken Couple. Adorio and the other names are the same, but the Guardian's part disappears, and his remarks are put in Adorio's mouth. A servant, Calandrino, is brought in, whose name is borrowed from The Great Duke of Florence, and Muggulla, a nurse, is added to be Calandrino's bride. The contents are worthy of the title. Monck Mason deplores the fact that Johnson's dictionary does not once quote Massinger or Beaumont and Fletcher. “They are more correct,” he says, “and grammatical than Shakspere, and appear to have had a more competent knowledge of other languages, which gave them a more accurate idea of their own.” There was a great reaction in the eighteenth century in favour of Massinger. Brander Matthews points out that The New Way is the only Elizabethan or Jacobean play, except Shakspere's, which held the stage until the first quarter of the nineteenth century,[99] and gives a good history of its illustrious career on the English and American stages.
The critics have differed much about Massinger. Gifford[100] and Hallam were enthusiastic in their support; Charles Lamb and Hazlitt[101] were against him, perhaps because they disliked his able Tory editor. The eighteenth-century writers regarded him as the champion of female virtue; and in our own time Sir A. Ward has defended his manly and sane morality in unhesitating language.[102] On the other hand, Boyle deems his heroines to be corrupt and his heroes “the victims of one devouring [pg 026] passion, often in a state of incipient madness, alternately raging and melancholy.”[103]
Like Euripides, Ovid, and Juvenal, Massinger is a writer whose faults are patent; all the more important, therefore, is it to make his merits quite clear. We cannot convince the world if we adopt the famous line of Goethe's heroine:
I cannot reason, I can only feel.[104]