English dramatist, son of Arthur Massinger or Messanger; baptized at St. Thomass, Salisbury, on the 24th of November 1583. He apparently belonged to an old Salisbury family, for the name occurs in the city records as early as 1415. He is described in his matriculation entry at St. Alban Hall, Oxford (1602), as the son of a gentleman. His father, who had also been educated at St. Alban Hall, was a member of parliament, and was attached to the household of Henry Herbert, 2nd earl of Pembroke, who recommended him in 1587 for the office of examiner in the court of the marches. The 3rd earl of Pembroke, the William Herbert whose name has been connected with Shakespeares sonnets, succeeded to the title in 1601. It has been suggested that he supported the poet at Oxford, but the significant omission of any reference to him in any of Massingers prefaces points to the contrary. Massinger left Oxford without a degree in 1606. His father had died in 1603, and he was perhaps dependent on his own exertions. The lack of a degree and the want of patronage from Lord Pembroke may both be explained on the supposition that he had become a Roman Catholic. On leaving the university he went to London to make his living as a dramatist, but his name cannot be definitely affixed to any play until fifteen years later, when The Virgin Martyr (ent. at Stationers Hall, Dec. 7, 1621) appeared as the work of Massinger and Dekker. During these years he worked in collaboration with other dramatists. A joint letter, from Nathaniel Field, Robert Daborne and Philip Massinger, to Philip Henslowe, begs for an immediate loan of five pounds to release them from their unfortunate extremitie, the money to be taken from the balance due for the play of Mr. Fletchers and ours. A second document shows that Massinger and Daborne owed Henslowe £3 on the 4th of July 1615. The earlier note probably dates from 1613, and from this time Massinger apparently worked regularly with John Fletcher, although in editions of Beaumont and Fletchers works his cooperation is usually unrecognized. Sir Aston Cokayne, Massingers constant friend and patron, refers in explicit terms to this collaboration in a sonnet addressed to Humphrey Moseley on the publication of his folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (Small Poems of Divers Sorts, 1658), and in an epitaph on the two poets he says:
Plays they did write together, were great friends, | |
And now one grave includes them in their ends. |
Massinger died suddenly at his house near the Globe theatre, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Saviours, Southwark, on the 18th of March 1640. In the entry in the parish register he is described as a stranger, which, however, implies nothing more than that he belonged to another parish.
The supposition that Massinger was a Roman Catholic rests upon three of his plays, The Virgin Martyr (licensed 1620), The Renegado (licensed 1624) and The Maid of Honour (c. 1621). The religious sentiment is certainly such as would obviously best appeal to an audience sympathetic to Roman Catholic doctrine. The Virgin Martyr, in which Dekker probably had a large share, is really a miracle play, dealing with the martyrdom of Dorothea in the time of Diocletian, and the supernatural element is freely used. Little stress can be laid on this performance as elucidating Massingers views. It is not entirely his work, and the story is early Christian, not Roman Catholic. In The Renegado, however, the action is dominated by the beneficent influence of a Jesuit priest, Francisco, and the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is enforced. In The Maid of Honour a complicated situation is solved by the decision of the heroine, Camiola, to take the veil. For this she is held up to all posterity a fair example for noble maids to imitate. Among all Massingers heroines Camiola is distinguished by genuine purity and heroism.
His plays have generally an obvious moral intention. He sets himself to work out a series of ethical problems through a succession of ingenious and effective plots. In the art of construction he has, indeed, few rivals. But the virtue of his heroes and heroines is rather morbid than natural, and often singularly divorced from common sense. His dramatis personae are in general types rather than living persons, and their actions do not appear to spring inevitably from their characters, but rather from the exigencies of the plot. The heroes are too good, and the villains too wicked to be quite convincing. Moreover their respective goodness and villainy are too often represented as extraneous to themselves. This defect of characterization shows that English drama had already begun to decline.
It seems doubtful whether Massinger was ever a popular playwright, for the best qualities of his plays would appeal rather to politicians and moralists than to the ordinary playgoer. He contributed, however, at least one great and popular character to the English stage. Sir Giles Overreach, in A New Way to Pay Old Debts, is a sort of commercial Richard III., a compound of the lion and the fox, and the part provides many opportunities for a great actor. He made another considerable contribution to the comedy of manners in The City Madam. In Massingers own judgment The Roman Actor was the most perfect birth of his Minerva. It is a study of the tyrant Domitian, and of the results of despotic rule on the despot himself and his court. Other favourable examples of his grave and restrained art are The Duke of Milan, The Bondman and The Great Duke of Florence.
Massinger was a student and follower of Shakespeare. The form of his verse, especially in the number of run-on lines, approximates in some respects to Shakespeares later manner. He is rhetorical and picturesque, but rarely rises to extraordinary felicity. His verse is never mean, but it sometimes comes perilously near to prose, and in dealing with passionate situations it lacks fire and directness.
The plays attributed to Massinger alone are The Duke of Milan, a Tragedy (c. 1618, pr. 1623 and 1638); The Unnatural Combat, a Tragedy (c. 1619, pr. 1639); The Bondman, an Antient Storie (licensed 1623, pr. 1624); The Renegado, a Tragaecomedie (lic. 1624, pr. 1630); The Parliament of Love (lic. 1624; ascribed, no doubt erroneously, in the Stationers Register, 1660, to W. Rowley; first printed by Gifford from an imperfect MS. in 1805); A New Way to Pay Old Debts, a Comoedie (c. 1625, pr. 1632); The Roman Actor. A Tragaedie (lic. 1626, pr. 1629); The Maid of Honour (dating perhaps from 1621, pr. 1632); The Picture, a Tragecomedie (lic. 1629, pr. 1630); The Great Duke of Florence, a Comicall Historie (lic. 1627, pr. 1635); The Emperor of the East, a Tragaecomoedie (lic. and pr. 1631), founded on the story of Theodosius the Younger; Believe as You List (rejected by the censor in January, but licensed in May, 1631; pr. 18481849 for the Percy Society); The City Madam, a Comedie (lic. 1632, pr. 1658), which Mr. Fleay (Biog. Chron. of the Eng. Drama, i. 226), however, considers to be a rifaciamento of an older play, probably by Jonson; The Guardian (lic. 1633, pr. 1655); and The Bashful Lover (lic. 1636, pr. 1655). A Very Woman, or The Prince of Tarent, licensed in 1634 as the work of Massinger alone, is generally referred to his collaboration with Fletcher. The exquisite temperance and justice of this piece are, according to Swinburne, foreign to Fletchers genius, and afford a striking example of Massingers artistic skill and moderation.
Twelve plays of Massinger are said to be lost, but the titles of some of these may be duplicates of those of existing plays. Five of these lost plays were MSS. used by John Warburtons cook for pie-covers. The numerous plays in which Massingers cooperation with John Fletcher is generally assumed are dealt with under Beaumont and Fletcher. But it may be here noted that Mr. R. Boyle has constructed an ingenious case for the joint authorship by Fletcher and Massinger of the two Shakespearian plays, Henry VIII. and Two Noble Kinsmen (see the New Shakspere Societys Transactions, 1884 and 1882). Mr. Boyle sees the touch of Massinger in the first two acts of the Second Maidens Tragedy (Lansdowne MS., lic. 1611), a play with which the names of Fletcher and Tourneur are also associated by different critics. The Fatall Dowry, a Tragedy (c. 1619, pr. 1632), which was adapted without acknowledgment by Nicholas Rowe in his Fair Penitent, was written in conjunction with Nathaniel Field; and The Virgin Martir, a Tragedie (lic. 1620, pr. 1621), with Thomas Dekker.
Massingers independent works were collected by Coxeter (4 vols., 1759, revised edition with introduction by Thomas Davies, 1779), by J. Monck Mason (4 vols., 1779), by William Gifford (4 vols., 1805, 1813), by Hartley Coleridge (1840), by Lieut.-Colonel Cunningham (1867), and selections by Mr. Arthur Symons in the Mermaid Series (18871889). Giffords remains the standard edition, and formed the basis of Cunninghams text. It contains An Essay on the Dramatic Writings of Massinger by Dr. John Ferriar.
Massinger has been the object of a good deal of criticism. A metrical examination of the plays in which Massinger was concerned is given in Englische Studien (Halle, v. 74, vii. 66, viii. 39, ix. 209 and x. 383), by Mr. R. Boyle, who also contributed the life of the poet in the Dictionary of National Biography. The sources of his plays are dealt with by E. Koeppel in Quellen Studien zu den Dramen Chapmans, Massingers und Fords (Strassburg, 1897). For detailed criticism, beside the introductions to the editions quoted, see A. W. Ward, Hist. of Eng. Dram. Lit. (1899), iii. 147, and F. G. Fleay, Biog. Chron. of the Eng. Drama (1891), under Fletcher; a general estimate of Massinger, dealing especially with his moral standpoint, is given in Sir Leslie Stephens Hours in a Library (3rd series, 1879); Swinburne, in the Fortnightly Review (July 1889), while acknowledging the justice of Sir L. Stephens main strictures, found much to say in praise of the poet. See also Cambridge History; Literary Criticism.