As a King’s Revels play this may be put in 1607–8. An earlier date has been thought to be indicated by Eastward Ho! (1605), II. ii. 41, ‘Via, the curtaine that shaddowed Borgia’, but if the reference is to a play, Borgia may well have figured in other plays. A play ‘Vom Turcken’ was taken by Spencer to Nuremberg in 1613 (Herz, 66).
CHARLES MASSEY.
For his career as an actor, cf. ch. xv.
He apparently wrote Malcolm King of Scots for the Admiral’s, to which he belonged, in April 1602, and began The Siege of Dunkirk, with Alleyn the Pirate in March 1603. Neither play survives.
PHILIP MASSINGER (1583–1640).
Massinger, baptized at Salisbury on 24 Nov. 1583, was son of Arthur Massinger, a confidential servant of Henry, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. He entered at St. Alban Hall, Oxford, and left without a degree in 1606. Little is known of him for some years thereafter. He is conjectured to have become a Catholic and thus to have imperilled his relations with the Herbert family, at any rate until the time of Philip, the 4th earl, who was certainly his patron. He was buried at St. Saviour’s on 18 March 1640 and left a widow. The greater part of his dramatic career, to which all his independent plays belong, falls outside the scope of this notice, but on 4 July 1615 he gave a joint bond with Daborne for £3 to Henslowe, and some undated correspondence probably of 1613 shows that he was collaborating in one or more plays with Daborne, Field, and Fletcher.
Collections
T. Coxeter (1759), J. M. Mason (1779), W. Gifford (1805), H. Coleridge (1840, 1848, 1851), F. Cunningham (1871, 3 vols.). [These include The Old Law, The Fatal Dowry, and The Virgin Martyr, but not any plays from the Beaumont and Fletcher Ff.]
Selections
1887–9. A. Symons, The Best Plays of P. M. 2 vols. (Mermaid Series). [Includes The Fatal Dowry and The Virgin Martyr.]