Philip Massinger

By

A. H. Cruickshank

Sometime Scholar and Fellow of New College, Oxford

Canon of Durham, and Professor of Greek and Classical Literature, in the University of Durham

Oxford

Basil Blackwell, Broad Street

1920

Contents

[pg i]

Dedication

Inscribed To
Frederic G. Kenyon
In Memory Of A Friendship
Of Forty-Four Years

Preface

In confessing that the war made me write a book I do not stand alone. Sensible as I am of its defects, I trust it will help to spread the knowledge of Massinger's works, and will invite others to deal on similar lines with the other dramatists of the great age. The design widened as it went on, and was then contracted. In the end I thought it wiser to confine myself to digesting the knowledge which I had of Massinger's text.

The Clarendon Press undertook to publish this book, but as, owing to war-work, they could fix no date, I asked them to release me. There would be no occasion to mention this fact were it not that it was owing to the original arrangement that I received much valuable help and advice from Mr. Percy Simpson. Many other scholars and friends have kindly aided me in various matters, among whom I should like to mention: Mr. J. C. Bailey, Mr. P. James Bayfield (photographer to Dulwich College), Dr. A. C. Bradley, Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. A. H. Bullen, Mr. A. K. Cook, Professor W. Macneile Dixon, Mr. H. H. E. Gaster, the Dean of Gloucester, Mr. E. Gosse, Sir W. H. Hadow, Archdeacon Hobhouse, Sir Sidney Lee, Mr. C. Leudesdorf, Dr. Falconer Madan, Mr. A. W. Pollard, Dr. P. G. Smyly, the Master of University College, Durham, Sir A. Ward, and Sir George F. Warner. Last, but not least, I thank my wife for her skilful and ready help with the proofs.

A. H. Cruickshank.

Philip Massinger

It is interesting to revise the literary judgments of youth; it is pleasant to find them confirmed by a more mature judgment. This train of thought has led me to read Massinger once more; and as I read, the desire arose to treat his works, to the best of my ability, with the attention to detail which modern scholarship requires. A great amount of valuable work has been done in the last fifty years on the writers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages; but no one, perhaps with the exception of Boyle, has applied to Massinger the care which Shakspere, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, to name no others, have secured. There is no reason why any of our great dramatists should be treated with less respect than those of Greece and Rome, of France and Germany.

The first thing to be done was to facilitate references by numbering the lines of Massinger's plays;[1] the next was to investigate once more the facts of his life, and to correlate them with the period in which he lived; the third was to read typical plays of the period, so as to arrive at a just estimate of our author.

His life will not detain us long. We know far less of him than we do of Shakspere. None of his sayings have been preserved to us; hardly any incidents of his career. His father was house-steward to two of the Earls of [pg 002] Pembroke, first to Henry Herbert, then to William Herbert,[2] Shakspere's friend. The elder Massinger was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and for several years a Member of Parliament. Philip Massinger, the dramatist, was born at Salisbury in 1584. In 1602 he went up to St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, where his father had been an undergraduate. We are told by A. à Wood that he went at Lord Pembroke's expense, but that he did not work hard at the University, and took no degree.[3] In or after the year 1606 he seems to have gone to London, and to have speedily engaged in the work of writing plays.[4] The wide reading which his plays presuppose probably began at Oxford.

It was the custom in those days, as in the time of Plautus at Rome,[5] for playwrights to revise old plays; and still more was it usual for them to collaborate.[6] We find Massinger at work in this way with Field,[7] Daborne,[8] [pg 003] Dekker, Tourneur, and above all, with Fletcher. With the latter he worked from 1613 to 1623. In that year, for some unknown reason, he seceded from the service of the leading company of actors of the day, who went by the name of the King's men, and wrote unaided three plays for the Queen's men, The Parliament of Love, The Bondman, and The Renegado. After Fletcher's death, in 1625, Massinger rejoined the King's men, and wrote for them until his death in 1640.

It has been surmised from the vivid colouring of The Virgin Martyr[9] and the plot of The Renegado,[10] where a Jesuit plays a leading part and is portrayed in a pleasing light, that Massinger turned Roman Catholic. The evidence for this theory is quite inadequate. Indeed, we might as well argue from Gazet's language that the author followed the Anglican via media.[11] Plots derived from French, Spanish, and Italian sources would naturally contain Roman Catholic machinery. We might as well infer that Shakspere was a Roman Catholic because Silvia goes to Friar Patrick's cell,[12] or because Friar Laurence is prominent in Romeo and Juliet.[13]

We know that Massinger lived a life of comparative poverty; on one occasion we find him, with two other dramatic authors, asking for a loan of £5.[14]

The person who thus obliged the three writers was Philip Henslowe, a dyer, theatrical lessee, and speculator, who acted as a kind of broker between actors and authors, buying from the one and selling to the other; we still possess his diary, containing information as to the prices which he gave for plays.[15] The prologue of The Guardian shows us that for two years before 1633 Massinger had been under a cloud, and had abstained from writing. Two of his plays had failed in 1631—The Emperor of the East[16] and Believe as You List[17]—so he appears to have put forth his full strength in The Guardian.

The dedications of Massinger's plays which have been preserved show that he was often dependent for support on the leaders of what he once or twice calls “the nobility.”[18]

The connexion of the poet with the family of which his father was the loyal and trusted servant has been exaggerated by some;[19] in the dedication of The Bondman, written in 1623, to Philip, Earl of Montgomery,[20] the poet distinctly states that though the Earl had helped the play at its first performance by his “liberal suffrages” yet he was personally unknown to him.[21] Amongst others to whom we find dedications is George Harding, Baron Berkeley, to whom Webster inscribed The Duchess of Malfi. It is pleasant to read in the dedication of The Picture “to my honoured and selected friends of the Noble Society of the Inner Temple” that Massinger received “frequent bounties” from them.

The plays give us no clear evidence that Massinger ever travelled abroad,[22] though such a passage as The Great [pg 006] Duke of Florence, II., 2, 5-21, rather suggests a visit to Italy. Nor have we any ground for supposing that he was, like Shakspere, an actor, unless indeed an obscure reference in the Dublin poem to the Earl of Pembroke be so interpreted.[23] In London he lived on the Bankside, Southwark. The story of his death is told us by our gossiping old friend Anthony à Wood, in his Athenae Oxonienses.[24] Massinger went to bed one night well, and [pg 007] was found dead the next morning. He was buried at St. Saviour's on March 18th, 1639/40.[25] The funeral was “accompanied by comedians,” a phrase which seems to show that his professional friends did him honour at the last; he is described in the monthly accounts of St. Saviour's as “a stranger”—that is to say, a non-parishioner. His intimate friend Sir Aston Cokaine tells us that he shared the grave of his friend John Fletcher;[26] and in 1896 a window in the south aisle of the nave of Southwark Cathedral was unveiled in his honour by Sir Walter Besant.[27]

What was the atmosphere in which Massinger lived? The days of James I. and Charles I. were less heroic than those of Elizabeth. In foreign politics England intervened once or twice in an ineffective way, and a good deal of sympathy was shown, much of it in a practical fashion, for the cause of the Protestant King of Bohemia. Gardiner[28] has pointed out that Charles I. gave permission to the Marquis of Hamilton to carry over volunteers in aid of Gustavus Adolphus just as James I. had allowed [pg 008] Vere to carry over volunteers to the Palatinate. Hamilton sailed in July, 1631, and The Maid of Honour was printed in 1632. The whole plot of this play recalls the relations of England to the Protestant cause on the Continent. Thus, William. Lord Craven, to whom Ford's Broken Heart is dedicated, and who was knighted at the age of seventeen, after his “valiant adventures” in the Netherlands under Henry, Prince of Orange, went to the assistance of Gustavus Adolphus in 1631, when only twenty-two years old.

Wars in the Low Countries are vaguely referred to in various passages, as, e.g., in The Fatal Dowry:[29]

Novall Jun. Oh, fie upon him, how he wears his clothes!

As if he had come this Xmas. from S. Omer's

To see his friends, and return'd after Twelfth-tide.

The date of the play is uncertain, but it must have been written some considerable time before being printed in 1632.[30] In The New Way to pay Old Debts Lord Lovell “has purchas'd a fair name in the wars.”[31] In The Fatal Dowry, The Picture, and The Unnatural Combat, we have the familiar type of the brave soldier who is disregarded in time of peace, and has come down to poverty and old clothes.

In the wider world of Europe the Turk and the Algerine pirate are still grim realities enough to form an effective scenic background.[32] Indeed, it was not so very long since the Battle of Lepanto. We find constant references to galley-slaves,[33] to the slave market,[34] and to apostates to Islam.[35] In the opening scene of The Picture the soldier husband parts from his wife on the frontier of Bohemia “not distant from the Turkish camp above five leagues.” One of the objections urged against the new custom of fighting duels is that thereby lives are lost which might have done service against the Turk.[36] The age of chivalry has its faint reflection in schemes to “redeem Christian slaves chain'd in the Turkish servitude” by force of arms, and in the prowess of the Knights of Malta.[37] The wealth and power of Turkey are taken for [pg 010] granted. When Malefort senior vows vengeance on Montreville, he cries out:

The Turkish Empire offer'd for his ransom

Should not redeem his life.[38]

At home we find the vices of a prolonged peace lending opportunity for some easy satire. On the whole, we may say that we do not learn very much about our country from the poet which we could not find in the other playwrights of the day. Let us rapidly put together some of his references. There were two Englands at this time, drifting inevitably apart, only to clash in fratricidal war under Charles I. The drama was becoming less and less national, more and more an affair of aristocratic patronage. Massinger does not often refer to the Puritans;[39] there is nothing so amusing in his plays as the passage in Fletcher's Fair Maid of the Inn, where the Pedant solicits the advice of Forobosco the quack about “erecting four new sects of religion at Amsterdam.”[40] The fashionable love of astrology is satirized in The City Madam. The England of Massinger's plays is an England which loves expense,[41] amusements, Greek [pg 011] wines,[42] masques,[43] new clothes,[44] and foreign fashions.[45] London is a great port, with trade to the Indies and aspirations after the “North passage.” The jealousy of the City and the Court, the ostentations of the one and the refinement of the other, point the moral of The City Madam.[46] The high-spirited 'prentices of the City of [pg 012] London take the law into their own hands in days when there are no police,[47] and their vices are satirized after the manner of Ben Jonson in the same play. Horse-play, such as tossing in a blanket, is considered a great joke.[48] The balladmonger so often referred to in Shakspere is much in evidence,[49] though indeed it was an age in which everyone wrote poetry.[50] In rural England we find the possibility of an unscrupulous local tyrant, such as is depicted to us in Massinger's masterpiece, Sir Giles Overreach, aided by his jackal, Mr. Justice Greedy.[51] That our poet had a keen eye for social evils, for the man who sells food at famine prices, the encloser of commons, the usurer, the worker of iron, the cheating tradesman, is [pg 013] clear from a passage in The Guardian.[52] The beautiful description in the same play of the amusements of country life, the hunting and the hawking, with which Durazzo seeks to console his love-sick ward Caldoro,[53] probably takes one back to Massinger's own boyhood in Wiltshire. As we should expect, there is a good deal of riding in the country scenes.[54] The characters of Sir John Frugal, the successful merchant, and Mr. Plenty, the country gentleman,[55] show us that the “John Bull” type of Englishman existed in those days.

The temptation to give a back-hand blow to one's own country in the course of a plot laid abroad is obvious and irresistible; where Shakspere had set the example others were sure to follow,[56] and Massinger does not spare the female sex of England. To judge by the passage in The Renegado,[57] the women of his day loved expense and luxury, and were very independent in their attitude to their husbands.[58] The humiliation of Lady Frugal and her two daughters after their extravagant ambitions is the point of The City Madam. The contrast between a uxorious husband and an imperious wife is one of Massinger's favourite effects.[59] Donusa's speech in her own [pg 014] defence in The Renegado might have been written by a suffragette of our own day.[60]

We do not get much direct evidence as to the characteristics of the playwright's audiences; Dr. Bradley has some good remarks on this subject.[61] “Nor is it credible that an appreciation of the best things was denied to the mob, which doubtless loved what we should despise; but appears also to have admired what we admire, and to have tolerated more poetry than most of us can stomach;” “the mass of the audience must have liked excitement, the open exhibition of violent and bloody deeds, and the intermixture of seriousness and mirth.” Dr. Bradley points out elsewhere[62] that the Elizabethan actor probably spoke more rapidly than our modern actors. This would make soliloquies less tedious.

To turn to the politics of the age; the rift between the dynasty and the nation grew wider as the century advanced. Though Massinger died before the days of the Long Parliament, we can imagine that he would have been one of those who eventually fought under protest for the King. We find evidence in his plays for supposing that he belonged to the Conservative Opposition, like his patron Philip, the fourth Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. [pg 015] He was a lover of liberty, and there are one or two indications that his plays offended the strict ideas of Charles I.'s censorship.

Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, refused on January 11th, 1630/31, to license one of his plays[63] because “it did contain dangerous matter, as the deposing of Sebastian King of Portugal by Philip II., and there being a peace sworn 'twixt the Kings of England and Spain.”[64] The same worthy records that King Charles I. himself read another of his plays,[65] while staying at Newmarket, and wrote against one passage, “This is too insolent, and to be changed.” The passage, which is put into the mouth of a King of Spain, runs as follows:

Monies! we'll raise supplies what way we please

And force you to subscribe to blanks, in which

We'll mulct you, as we think fit. The Caesars

In Rome were wise, acknowledging no laws

But what their swords did ratify; the wives

And daughters of the senators bowing to

Their will as deities.[66]

These lines clearly reflect on the autocratic methods which prevailed in England from 1629 to 1640.

There is much in Timoleon's speeches in the senate[67] which seems to contain covert references to the England [pg 016] of the day, and notably in lines 203-213, where the unprepared state of the army and navy is referred to.

It has been thought with much probability that the Duke of Buckingham is satirized in the slight sketch of Gisco in The Bondman,[68] and in the more fully drawn character of Fulgentio in The Maid of Honour:[69]

Adorni. Pray you, sir, what is he?

Astutio. A gentleman, yet no lord. He hath some drops

Of the king's blood running in his reins, derived

Some ten degrees off. His revenue lies

In a narrow compass, the king's ear; and yields him

Every hour a fruitful harvest. Men may talk

Of three crops in a year in the Fortunate Islands,

Or profit made by wool; but, while there are suitors,

His sheepshearing, nay, shaving to the quick

Is in every quarter of the moon, and constant.

In the time of trussing a point, he can undo

Or make a man; his play or recreation

Is to raise this up, or pull down that, and though

He never yet took orders, makes more bishops

In Sicily than the Pope himself.

The grumbling of the professional soldier against the royal favourite inspires a passage in The Duke of Milan.[70] A similar freedom of speech is found in The Maid of Honour; for instance, in the following passages:

Gasparo. When you know what 'tis,

You will think otherwise; no less will do it

Than fifty thousand crowns.

Camiola. A pretty sum,

The price weighed with the purchase; fifty thousand!

To the king 'tis nothing. He that can spare more

To his minion for a masque, cannot but ransom

Such a brother at a million.[71]

Camiola. With your leave, I must not kneel, sir,

While I reply to this, but thus rise up

In my defence, and tell you, as a man

(Since, when you are unjust, the deity,

Which you may challenge as a king, parts from you,)

'Twas never read in holy writ, or moral,

That subjects on their loyalty, were obliged

To love their sovereign's vices; your grace, sir,

To such an undeserver is no virtue.[72]

There are also passages in The Emperor of the East which seem to attack the Government of the day and its agents.[73] I will quote the chief of these as a specimen of honest indignation:

Pulcheria. How I abuse

This precious time! Projector, I treat first

Of you and your disciples; you roar out,

All is the king's, his will above his laws;

And that fit tributes are too gentle yokes

For his poor subjects; whispering in his ear,

If he would have their fear, no man should dare

To bring a salad from his country garden,

Without the paying gabel; kill a hen,

Without excise; and that if he desire

To have his children or his servants wear

Their heads upon their shoulders, you affirm

In policy 'tis fit the owner should

Pay for them by the poll[74]; or, if the prince wants

A present sum he may command a city

Impossibilities, and for non-performance

Compel it to submit to any fine

His officers shall impose. Is this the way

To make our emperor happy? Can the groans

Of his subjects yield him music? Must his thoughts

Be wash'd with widows' and wrong'd orphans' tears,

Or his power grow contemptible?[75]

The Englishman's love of liberty inspires a vigorous speech delivered by the British slave in The Virgin Martyr.[76]

Further, the impatience which Englishmen felt from time to time at the poor part played by their country in the Thirty Years' War is reflected in The Maid of Honour. Bertoldo there gets leave from the King of Sicily to go to help the beleaguered Duke of Urbin. He is, however, disavowed by the crafty, peace-loving king. In the debate Bertoldo describes Sicily in language which might easily be applied to England, and then proceeds in an eloquent passage to refer to England's glorious naval tradition in the past:

Bertoldo. If examples

May move you more than arguments, look on England,

The empress of the European isles,

And unto whom alone ours yields precedence:

When did she flourish so, as when she was

The mistress of the ocean, her navies

Putting a girdle round about the world?

When the Iberian quaked, her worthies named;

And the fair flower-de-luce grew pale, set by

The red rose and the white! Let not our armour

Hung up, or our unrigg'd Armada make us

Ridiculous to the late poor snakes, our neighbours,

Warm'd in our bosoms, and to whom again

We may be terrible.[77]

Here, at any rate, Massinger differs from Shakspere, who makes no reference to the exploits of our sailors; indeed, it would seem that, like Trafalgar, the defeat of the Armada had no significance for its own generation.[78] But we must not forget that Massinger was the bosom [pg 019] friend of Fletcher, in whose plays sailors occur again and again.[79]

The fact that Massinger was a Cavalier “Radical,” a free lance and grumbler of the Opposition, may in part explain his struggles and his poverty. His natural patrons may have looked askance at his independent attitude, so alien to the passive obedience preached by Fletcher. But, whatever were his politics, it is clear that he was no Puritan. Brought up in close contact with a noble house, educated at Oxford, and well versed in the classics,[80] as many allusions in his works testify, he shows alike in his merits and his faults the Cavalier mind. To this extent he may be judged “felix opportunitate mortis,” for of all sections of the nation those whose hearts were with the King, and their reason with the Opposition, had the hardest part to play after 1640.

In the department of literature the talent of the country had concentrated itself more and more on play-writing. Among Massinger's contemporaries we note Jonson, Chapman, Fletcher, Beaumont, Webster, Middleton, Dekker, Heywood, Rowley, Tourneur, Shirley—all keen and able dramatists. Massinger, in his grasp of stagecraft, his flexible metre, his desire in the sphere of ethics to exploit both vice and virtue, is typical of an age which had much culture, but which, without being exactly corrupt, lacked moral fibre.

His plays may be divided into three classes: first, those which have come down to us under his name; secondly, [pg 020] those which he wrote with Fletcher or other authors; and, thirdly, those which have disappeared. It is not easy to draw the border-line between the first and second classes. In the last forty years the students of English literature have devoted much attention to verse and other tests, and there are those who profess themselves competent to decide which parts of a composite play were written by the various collaborators. It is clear that the use of these tests requires caution. An author may sometimes experiment in the style of somebody else; it has been held that Shakspere wrote Henry VIII in the manner of Fletcher, his younger rival; and Delius was of opinion that The Two Noble Kinsmen is due to two imitators, one of Shakspere and one of Fletcher. Boyle speaks confidently as follows:[81] “Mr. Fleay used almost exclusively versification to distinguish author from author. Nor is this by any means so bold an undertaking as it seems. I have used other tests apart from the versification, and have almost uniformly found the impressions derived from the latter correct.” Our confidence in Boyle is shaken when he attributes[82] the first two acts of A New Way to pay Old Debts to Fletcher on the evidence of the double endings. He points out that the allusion to the taking of Breda on July 1st, 1625,[83] is just possible, as Fletcher was buried on August 29th, 1625. This is clearly a case where we must take other than metrical considerations into account. Has the comedy the sparkle, the bustle, and the improbability of Fletcher?

Again, it is not too much to say that it is a waste of time to apply verse tests to Tourneur; a great part of the Atheist's Tragedy is not poetry at all, but prose measured off in lengths.

The Virgin Martyr states on its title-page that Dekker was part author. Similarly, The Fatal Dowry was partly [pg 021] due to Field. Part of A Very Woman[84] is held by many critics to be written by Fletcher; certainly the style of the play is in places more tender and more racy than we should expect from Massinger. The Old Law is said to have been written by Massinger, Middleton, and Rowley. It was a popular play, and often revived; its first appearance was in 1599,[85] when our poet was but fifteen years old. His share in it must therefore consist of additions or modifications at a later date. Certainly there is little in the play which reminds one of him; original as is its plot, and tender its pathos, both its tragedy and comedy are in a simpler manner than his.[86]

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]

I do not indeed claim to discover much that is new about Massinger, nor to reverse the judgment of time. He is, and he remains, in the second rank of English writers. But it would be a misfortune if undue obscurity were to befall an author who was at once so manly and so skilful. I take up the cudgels for him, partly because the balance of critical judgment has of late gone too far against him; and yet in a sense he has only come into his own in the last thirty years, by reason of the unanimity with which so much good strong work in Fletcher's plays is now deemed to be due to him. He has received much praise and much blame; I should like by careful analysis of the problem to arrive at a juster judgment. But in the main, I must confess, I plead for Massinger because I love him.

What, then, are the chief merits of our author? They are three: his stagecraft, his style, and his metre. And, first, his command of stagecraft has been universally conceded.[105] This is an important point; it is as much as to say that the plays are readable and would act well;[106] [pg 027] when you begin one of them you wish to know what is going to happen. The first act has usually a great breadth and swing; it is admirably proportioned and dignified. The chief characters are introduced, and the train is well laid, without stiffness or delay. Good examples of this fact are to be found in The Bondman and The Emperor of the East. In The Renegado the first scene at once reveals the object of the plot, the rescue of Paulina. In The Bondman Marullo enters at line 38, and our attention is called to him by Leosthenes. As the play progresses you feel that it is what the French call bien charpenté—well constructed. If, as is often the case, there is a mystery or a secret, it is sufficiently well kept to excite the curiosity. The author does not depend very much on soliloquies or disguises; he does not, as a rule, complicate matters by underplots and cross-interests. The stage is not overcrowded; you do not feel the need of constantly referring to the list of dramatis personae. A curious instance of this economy is The Maid of Honour, where there is no Queen of Sicily. Minor characters when they reappear are recognized and provided for, as, for example, Calypso in The Guardian (IV., 3). The conscientious author forgets no detail in order to round off his plot; thus in the same play the blow struck at the beginning is apologized for in V., 3, 250. Nor is there a reckless change of scene. Moreover, a lifelike effect is given by the fact that speeches generally end in the middle of a line. As so often in Euripides, the people say the sort of things that under the circumstances you would expect them to say in real life.[107] A comparison of Massinger [pg 028] with Ben Jonson will make this ease of construction clear at once. Köppel has noted the skill with which the narratives of Suetonius and Dion Cassius are combined in The Roman Actor. It may sound obvious to add that the titles of the plays correspond to the chief subject-matter, were it not that in so many of the Elizabethan plays this is not the case. Take as examples Middleton's Changeling and Mayor of Queenborough.

Yet it would be too much to say that all Massinger's plays are equally successful in this respect. The plot of The Guardian, for example, is unusually intricate. Like Shakspere, he occasionally crowds too much into the fifth act—for instance, in The Unnatural Combat. The device of the apple which produces so much jealousy and trouble in The Emperor of the East is rather trivial for a tragi-comedy.[108] The promise of Cleora to wear a scarf over her eyes until her jealous lover returns from the war is exasperating.[109] Again, Camiola in The Maid of Honour (III., 3, 200) forgets that Bertoldo is “bound to a single life,” as she had herself pointed out to him (I., 2, 148). Nor does Bertoldo (IV., 3, 100) in his acceptance of her offer say anything about the necessary dispensation. On the other hand, Massinger avoids those scenes on board ship of which Fletcher is so fond, and which on the Jacobean stage must have been ineffective to the spectators, and indeed, are so on any stage.[110]

Similarly, it is clear that torture on the stage can hardly be made effective.[111]

One of Massinger's favourite devices is to combine subordinates. He has learnt from Hamlet the lesson of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He has studied the method of such scenes as Henry V., I., 2, 97-135; II., 2; III., 5; III., 7. If something has to be done, two or three people express their eagerness to do it. If someone has to be persuaded, two or three of the characters press home the various arguments. This all works for lucidity and ease, and presents a lifelike combination on the stage.[112] Instances of the device abound; let us take one from The Picture.[113] The great soldier Ferdinand, on his return from [pg 030] the wars, is received courteously by the old Counsellor Eubulus, but the fashionable young men, Ubaldo and Ricardo, think they can do the thing better; the passage runs thus:

Ricardo. This was pretty;

But second me now; I cannot stoop too low

To do your excellence that due observance

Your fortune claims.

Eubulus. He ne'er thinks on his virtues!

Ricardo. For, being as you are, the soul of soldiers,

And bulwark of Bellona——

Ubaldo. The protection

Both of the court and king——

Ricardo. And the sole minion

Of mighty Mars——

Ubaldo. One that with justice may

Increase the number of the worthies——

Eubulus. Heyday!

Ricardo. It being impossible in my arms to circle

Such giant worth——

Ubaldo. At distance we presume

To kiss your honour'd gauntlet.

Eubulus. What reply now

Can he make to this foppery?

Ferdinand. You have said,

Gallants, so much and hitherto done so little,

That till I learn to speak and you to do,

I must take time to thank you.

Eubulus. As I live,

Answer'd as I could wish, how the fops gape now!

Ricardo. This was harsh and scurvy.

Ubaldo. We will be revenged,

When he comes to court the ladies, and laugh at him.

Another of Massinger's effective devices is to sustain the interest of the spectators by concealing characters [pg 031] and facts; thus, in The Duke of Milan we do not fathom for some time the villainy of Francisco; in The City Madam we ponder from the beginning over the obscure character of Luke. The best instances of this expedient are to be found in The Unnatural Combat and The Bondman. The air of gloom which overhangs the former tragedy is as great in its way as anything which our author has attained; and though the play is what we may call Elizabethan rather than for all time, yet it is in some sense the best specimen of his serious work. The desire of Malefort is that of the father in Shelley's Cenci; and perhaps the only way to prevent the theme from being intolerable was to veil it as long as possible, and to raise the spectators' sympathy at first for a man who had fought well for the State, and who to all appearance was badly treated by his pirate son.[114] In The Bondman, Marullo and Timandra, the brother and sister, are concealed till the very end, when they reveal themselves to be Pisander and Statilia—thereby bringing to an unexpected conclusion a plot which seemed to offer no solution.[115]

In The City Madam the method is varied a little: here we have one of Massinger's greatest creations, the fawning hypocrite, Luke. Indications of his future development are skilfully given from time to time, so that when this alarming person at length shows himself in his true colours we shiver without being surprised. The same idea shows itself in The Renegado,[116] in the skill with which Donusa leads up to her proposal that Vitelli should turn Mahometan; and in The Virgin Martyr,[117] where Artemia prepares the way for the offer of her hand to Antoninus.

Massinger is never so happy as when he has an opportunity in his well-proportioned scenes for displays of rhetoric, such as we find in Euripides, where character argues against character.[118] These scenes are often thrown into the form of a trial at law or a debate in the Senate.[119]

The plays end well and effectively; our author excels in the tragi-comedy, a type much affected by Fletcher. Like all his contemporaries, he felt that the intermixture of a lighter element in a play which ended happily was justifiable.[120] The haste which Shakspere sometimes shows in his fifth act is, as a rule, not apparent in Massinger. For example, in The Virgin Martyr, the death of the heroine occurs at the end of the fourth act. To all appearance there is bound to be an anticlimax in the fifth act. But there is not; on the contrary, the appearance of the heavenly messenger, bearing the fruits of Paradise to the cruel persecutor Theophilus, elevates the mind into a state of surprise and admiration. It has often been pointed out that the appearance of a deity to [pg 033] cut the knot at the end of a play of Euripides, which sometimes irritates the thinker in his study, and provokes him to write essays on the bad art and theology of the poet, is dazzlingly beautiful on the stage, and raises associations of sublimity and awe; it may in the same way be imagined how effective must have been the procession at the end of The Virgin Martyr. The stage directions run as follows: “Enter Dorothea in a white robe, crownes upon her head, led in by Angels, Antoninus, Caliste, and Christeta following, all in white, but lesse glorious, the Angell with a Crowne for him” (i.e., Theophilus). At the sight of the glorious vision the persecutor dies, converted to the Christian faith, and the evil spirit, which has prompted his cruel acts, sinks to his own place with thunder and lightning, while Diocletian and his court look on in amazement. Similarly, in The Roman Actor there is no anticlimax; though Paris dies in the fourth act,[121] we feel that the tragedy is incomplete until it is rounded off by the punishment of the Emperor Domitian, which we breathlessly await.

Secondly, Massinger has a beautiful style. This point again is conceded by all the critics. The elegance of his dedications shows that had he wished he could have written excellent prose.[122] One who depreciates him allows that his style is “pure and free from violent metaphors and harsh constructions.”[123] It has the grace and balance which one would expect from a well-bred and educated man, owing little to ornament or epithets or images. It serves its purpose, which is to tell a story [pg 034] rapidly, and to unfold character rather than to display the author's command of language or subtlety of thought and expression. Seldom trivial, it is never prosaic, and yet it is constantly on the border-line of prose. Massinger thought in blank verse because he was a dramatist rather than because he was a poet. Hence his enemies might say that his lines are prose in lengths; yet that would be an unjust accusation. The poetical “colour” is here, the ideal dignity, the atmosphere, although they obtrude themselves less on the reader than in most poets. Like Ovid, Massinger is one whose amazing facility carries us along like a flood—a writer who should be read in large quantities at a time,

“Whose easy Pegasus will amble o'er

Some three-score miles of fancy in an hour.”[124]

It needs little argument to show that a poet of this order can easily secure the effect of verisimilitude to life, and will owe much of his success to that fact. Style naturally appeals differently to different people; there are those who are captivated by the glamour of Shelley and Swinburne, or the pomp of Jeremy Taylor; there are also those who enjoy the severity of Paradise Regained, and the simplicity of Newman's Sermons. In an age like the present, when many of our poets, like our musicians, whatever else they are, either will not or cannot be simple, it is refreshing to turn to an author who is always lucid, and who is content to tell a story to the best of his ability.

There are times when the style of Massinger rises into solemn eloquence, especially when he indulges in the moralizing vein. Unlike some of his literary contemporaries, Massinger wishes to show Virtue triumphant and Vice beaten. Vice is never glorified in his pages, or condoned. Honest indignation is perhaps the emotion [pg 035] which he handles best. The uncontrollable anger which meanness and unworthiness provoke expresses itself in lofty language. Forcible and plain-spoken rebukes are found, which show that Massinger could be curt when he pleased. The plays are full of high-spirited passages, affording admirable opportunities for a master of elocution.

Let me give a specimen of just anger in the speech of Marullo. Marullo is the leader of the revolt of the slaves at Syracuse, and he is addressing their former lords and masters:

Briefly thus then,

Since I must speak for all,—your tyranny

Drew us from our obedience. Happy those times

When lords were styled fathers of families,

And not imperious masters! when they number'd

Their servants almost equal with their sons,

Or one degree beneath them! when their labours

Were cherish'd and rewarded, and a period

Set to their sufferings; when they did not press

Their duties or their wills, beyond the power

And strength of their performance! all things order'd

With such decorum, as wise lawmakers

From each well-govern'd private house deriv'd

The perfect model of a Commonwealth.

Humanity then lodged in the hearts of men,

And thankful masters carefully provided

For creatures wanting reason. The noble horse

That, in his fiery youth, from his wide nostrils

Neigh'd courage to his rider, and brake through

Groves of opposed pikes, bearing his lord

Safe to triumphant victory, old or wounded,

Was set at liberty and freed from service.

The Athenian mules that from the quarry drew

Marble, hew'd for the temples of the gods,

The great work ended, were dismiss'd and fed

At the public cost; nay, faithful dogs have found

Their sepulchres; but man to man more cruel,

Appoints no end to the sufferings of his slave;

Since pride stepp'd in and riot, and o'erturned

This goodly frame of concord, teaching masters

To glory in the abuse of such as are

Brought under their command; who grown unuseful,

Are less esteem'd than beasts. This you have practis'd,

Practis'd on us with rigour; this hath forced us

To shake our heavy yokes off; and, if redress

Of these just grievances be not granted us,

We'll right ourselves, and by strong hand defend

What we are now possess'd of.[125]

In a lower key of manly dignity is the speech of Charalois before the Judges in The Fatal Dowry. It begins thus:

Thus low my duty

Answers your lordships' counsel. I will use,

In the few words with which I am to trouble

Your lordships' ears the temper that you wish me;

Not that I fear to speak my thoughts as loud,

And with a liberty beyond Romont;

But that I know, for me that am made up

Of all that's wretched, so to haste my end,

Would seem to most rather a willingness

To quit the burden of a hopeless life

Than scorn of death or duty to the dead.[126]

As an example of a high-spirited passage, a speech may be given from The Bondman. Cleora, the heroine, comes forward in a meeting of the Senate to urge patriotic effort on her fellow-countrymen. Timoleon, the general, is in the chair, and she addresses him first:

Cleora. If a virgin,

Whose speech was ever yet ushered with fear;

One knowing modesty and humble silence

To be the choicest ornaments of our sex

In the presence of so many reverend men,

Struck dumb with terror and astonishment,

Presume to clothe her thought in vocal sounds,

Let her find pardon. First to you, great sir,

A bashful maid's thanks, and her zealous prayers,

Wing'd with pure innocence, bearing them to heaven,

For all prosperity that the gods can give

To one whose piety must exact their care,

Thus low I offer.

Timoleon. 'Tis a happy omen.

Rise, blest one, and speak boldly. On my virtue

I am thy warrant, from so clear a spring

Sweet rivers ever flow.

Cleora. Then thus to you,

My noble father, and these lords, to whom

I next owe duty; no respect forgotten

To you my brother, and these bold young men

(Such I would have them) that are, or should be,

The city's sword and target of defence,

To all of you I speak; and if a blush

Steal on my cheeks, it is shown to reprove

Your paleness, willingly I would not say,

Your cowardice or fear; think you all treasure

Hid in the bowels of the earth, or shipwreck'd

In Neptune's wat'ry kingdom, can hold weight,

When liberty and honour fill one scale,

Triumphant Justice sitting on the beam?

Or dare you but imagine that your gold is

Too dear a salary for such as hazard

Their blood and lives in your defence? For me,

An ignorant girl, bear witness! heaven, so far

I prize a soldier, that to give him pay,

With such devotion as our flamens offer

Their sacrifices at the holy altar,

I do lay down these jewels, will make sale

Of my superfluous wardrobe, to supply

The meanest of their wants.[127]

This passage is printed in a broadside (headed “Countrymen”) relating to the expected invasion of England by Bonaparte, to be found at the British Museum. A short [pg 038] statement of the plot of The Bondman is followed by a quotation of Act I., 3, 213-368, with one or two slight omissions. Possibly Gifford inspired its publication.

Perhaps the most eloquent passage in Massinger is the speech of Paris, the Roman actor, before the Senate, in defence of his profession:

Aretinus. Are you on the stage,

You talk so boldly?

Paris. The whole world being one,

This place is not exempted; and I am

So confident in the justice of our cause,

That I would wish Cæsar, in whose great name

All kings are comprehended, sate as judge

To hear our plea, and then determine of us.

If to express a man sold to his lusts,

Wasting the treasure of his time and fortunes

In wanton dalliance, and to what sad end

A wretch that's so given over does arrive at;