1912. L. A. Sherman, P. M. (M. E. D.).
Dissertations: S. R. Gardiner, The Political Element in M. (1876, N. S. S. Trans. 314); J. Phelan, P. M. (1879–80, Anglia, ii. 1, 504; iii. 361); E. Koeppel, Quellenstudien zu den Dramen G. Chapman’s, P. M.’s und J. Ford’s (1897, Q. F. lxxxii); W. von Wurzbach, P. M. (1899–1900, Jahrbuch, xxxv. 214, xxxvi. 128); C. Beck, P. M. The Fatal Dowry (1906); A. H. Cruickshank, Philip Massinger (1920).
It is doubtful how far Massinger’s dramatic activity began before 1616. For ascriptions to him, s.v. Beaumont and Fletcher (Captain, Cupid’s Revenge, Coxcomb, Scornful Lady, Honest Man’s Fortune, Faithful Friends, Thierry and Theodoret, T. N. K., Love’s Cure), Anthony Brewer (The Lovesick King), and Second Maiden’s Tragedy (ch. xxiv). It has also been suggested that a Philenzo and Hypollita and an Antonio and Vallia, ascribed to him in late records, but not extant, may represent revisions of early work by Dekker (q.v.).
FRANCIS MERBURY (c. 1579).
At the end of the epilogue to the following play is written ‘Amen, quoth fra: Merbury’. The formula may denote only a scribe, but a precisely similar one denotes the author in the case of Preston’s Cambyses (q.v.).
A Marriage between Wit and Wisdom. c. 1579
[MS.] Brit. Mus. Addl. MS. 26782, formerly penes Sir Edward Dering.
Editions by J. O. Halliwell (1846, Sh. Soc.), J. S. Farmer (1909, T. F. T.).
The MS. has a title-page, with the date 1579, an arrangement of the parts for six actors and the title ‘The —— of a Marige betweene wit and wisdome very frutefull and mixed full of pleasant mirth as well for The beholders as the Readers or hearers neuer before imprinted’. There are nine Scenes in two Acts, with a Prologue and Epilogus. The characters are almost wholly allegorical. Idleness is ‘the vice’. The stage-directions mention a ‘stage’. Halliwell prints the mutilated word left blank in the title above as ‘Contract’, no doubt rightly. Conceivably the play was in fact printed in 1579, as ‘Mariage of wit and wisdome’ is in Rogers and Ley’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, lxxxvii).
The play might be identical with the lost Paul’s moral of The Marriage of Mind and Measure (cf. App. B), which also belongs to 1579. Fleay, ii. 287, 294, infers from a not very conclusive reference to a ‘King’ in sc. iv that it dates from the time of Edward VI. He also identifies it with the Hit Nail o’ th’ Head named in Sir Thomas More (q.v.) because that phrase is quoted in the Epilogus, curiously disregarding the fact that the Sir Thomas More list names the play under its existing title as distinct from Hit Nail o’ th’ Head. Most of the plays in the Sir Thomas More list seem to be pre-Elizabethan; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 200.