Theophilus. O! mark it, therefore, and with that attention, As you would hear an embassy from heaven, By a wing'd legate.—V. M., V., 2, 103.
See the photograph at the beginning of the book. Cf. also Greg's Henslowe Papers, article 68. Fleay identifies the play referred to in the document as The Honest Man of Fortune, acted in 1613. In the first Dublin poem, after referring to the patronage which had befriended Jonson and Fletcher, Massinger goes on thus:
“These are precedents
I cite with reverence; my low intents
Look not so high; yet some work I might frame
That should not wrong my duty, nor your name;
Were but your lordship pleased to cast an eye
Of favour on my trod-down poverty.”
Cf. W. W. Greg's Henslowe's Diary, vol. ii., pp. 110-147. Mr. Greg points out (p. 113) that “there is no record of any speculations of Henslowe's own as far as the evidence of the Diary is concerned. The accounts are company accounts”—i.e., of The Rose and Fortune Theatres.
We have also at Dulwich a bond from R. Daborne and P. Massinger to Philip Henslowe for payment of £3, dated July 4th, 1615. Cf. Greg's Henslowe Papers, article 102.
No doubt he knew some foreign languages. His plays come from various sources, French, Italian, and Spanish, some of which, however, had been translated into English. The Renegado is traceable to a comedy of Cervantes, Los Baños de Argel, printed in 1615. The Emperor of the East is derived from a French translation of Zonaras. If, which is doubtful, The Duke of Milan owes anything to Guicciardini, his history had appeared in an English translation by Sir Geoffrey Fenton in 1579. Fleay has a curious theory that where French scenes are found in Fletcher they are due to Massinger.
Much interesting information on the great debt which Fletcher and other dramatists owed to Spanish literature will be found in F. E. Schelling's Elizabethan Drama, vol. ii., pp. 205-218 and 530. Schelling comes to the conclusion that Fletcher did not know Spanish; but he quotes an unpublished dictum of his friend Dr. Rosenbach, who holds it as certain that Massinger knew Spanish. The Island Princess is based on a Spanish play, of which no translation is known, Conquista de las islas Malucas, by De Argensola, 1609. Rosenbach attributes the play to Massinger! It is clear, however, that a translation may have been in circulation from which Fletcher took his materials, or somebody may have seen the play acted in Spain, and reported it to him. Further, Love's Cure is based on the Comedia de la Fuerza de la Costumbre, by Guillen De Castro, licensed at Valencia, February 7th, 1625, and published three months later. Fletcher died in August, 1625, and Stiefel thinks that he read Spanish, and that this is his last work. Rosenbach and Bullen assign the play to Massinger (cf. Appendix III., No. 29). It is highly desirable that the grounds which led Rosenbach to believe that Massinger knew Spanish should be made public.
Lines 39-45 run thus:
Let them write well that do this, and in grace.
I would not for a pension or a place
Part so with over candour: let me rather
Live poorly on those toys I would not father;
Not known beyond a player or a man,
That does pursue the course that I have ran.
Ere so grow famous.
Lines 41-42 are interesting as seeming to hint that Massinger preferred to waive publicity as to his collaboration with Fletcher and others. The poem was published by A. B. Grosart in Englische Studien, xxvi., pp. 1-7, and will be found with the original spelling and punctuation in [Appendix XVII].