Born, at Salisbury, 1583; baptised 24 Nov. Possibly page to Earl of Pembroke in boyhood, Matric., St. Alban Hall, Oxford, 14 May 1602. Left Oxford, 1606; took no degree. To London; took to writing plays. Collaborated with Nathaniel Field, Cyril Tourneur, Daborne and others; with Fletcher, 1613–25. Wrote plays for King’s Company of Players, 1616–23, 1625–40; for Queen’s Company, 1623–25. Married. Died, suddenly, in London, March 1640; buried, in St. Saviour’s, Southwark, 18 March. Works: “The Virgin Martir” (with T. Dekker), 1622; “The Duke of Millaine,” 1623; “The Bondman,” 1624; “The Roman Actor,” 1629; “The Picture,” 1630; “The Renegado,” 1630; “The Emperor of the East,” 1632; “The Maid of Honour,” 1632; “The Fatal Dowry” (with N. Field; anon.), 1632; “A New Way to pay Old Debts,” 1633; “The Great Duke of Florence,” 1636; “The Unnaturall Combat,” 1639. (Several plays known to have been printed are lost.) Posthumous: “Three new Playes; viz., The Bashful Lover, Guardian, Very Woman,” 1655; “The Old Law” (with Middleton and Rowley), 1656; “The City Madam,” 1658; “The Parliament of Love,” ed. by Gifford, 1805; “Believe as You List,” ed. for Percy Soc., 1849. Collected Works: ed. by Coxeter (4 vols.), 1759; ed. by Monck Mason (4 vols.), 1779; ed. by Gifford (4 vols.), 1805.

Personal

  Buried, Philip Massinger, a stranger.

  This day I searched the register of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, by the playhouse then there, vulgo St. Mary’s Overy’s; and find Philip Massinger buryed March 18th, 1639. I am enformed at the place where he dyed, which was by the Bankes side neer the then playhouse, that he was buryed about the middle of the Bullhead-churchyard—i.e. that churchyard (for there are four) which is next the Bullhead taverne, from whence it has its denomination. He dyed about the 66th yeare of his age: went to bed well, and dyed suddenly—but not of the plague.

  As for our author Ph. Massinger, he made his last exit very suddenly, in his house on the Bank-side in Southwark, near to the then Play-House, for he went to bed well and was dead before morning. Whereupon his body, being accompanied by comedians, was buried about the middle of that Ch. Yard belonging to S. Saviours Church there, commonly called the Bull-head (Ch. Yard, that is, in that which joyns to the Bull-head Tavern (for there are in all four yards belonging to that Church) on the 18 day of March in sixteen hundred thirty and nine.

  Of his private life literally nothing can be said to be known, except that his dedications bespeak incessant distress and dependence, while the recommendatory poems prefixed to his plays address him with attributes of virtue, which are seldom lavished with flattery or falsehood on those who are poor…. Of all his admirers only Sir Aston Cokayne dedicated a line to his memory. Even posterity did him long injustice: Rowe, who had discovered his merits in the depth of their neglect, forbore to be his editor, in the hopes of concealing his plagiarism from the “Fatal Dowry;” and he seemed on the eve of oblivion, when Dodsley’s reprint of our old plays brought him faintly into that light of reputation, which has been made perfectly distinct by Mr. Gifford’s edition of his works.

  We draw to a close. After “The King and Subject,” so happy in its timely expurgation, Massinger produced two dramas, “Alexius, or the Chaste Lover,” and “The Fair Anchoress of Pausilippo.” It is a pity they are both lost, for the titles promise much in his best way. The last was acted in January, 1640. On the 16th March, in the same year, he went to bed in apparent health, and was found dead in the morning in his house on the Bankside. Such is the received account; but he seems to have had none to care for him, none to mark his symptoms, or to detect the slow decay which he might conceal in despair of sympathy.

Poorly, poor man, he lived—poorly, poor man, he died.

He was buried in the churchyard of St. Saviour’s, and the comedians were his only mourners—perhaps half envious of his escape from the storm that was already grumbling afar, and sending ahead its herald billows. No stone marked his neglected resting-place, but in the parish register appears this brief memorial, “March 20, 1639–40—buried Philip Massinger, a STRANGER.” His sepulchre was like his life, obscure: like the nightingale, be sung darkling—it is to be feared, like the nightingale of the fable, with his breast against a thorn.

  It may safely be asserted that, little as we know of Massinger’s life, few personalities in the gallery of our old dramatists are recognisable with greater distinctness in their works, and few commend themselves more signally to high-minded sympathy and esteem.

The Old Law

  There is an exquisiteness of moral sensibility, making one’s eyes to gush out tears of delight, and a poetical strangeness in the circumstances of this sweet tragi-comedy, which are unlike anything in the dramas which Massinger wrote alone. The pathos is of a subtler edge. Middleton and Rowley, who assisted in it, had both of them finer geniuses than their associate.

The Virgin Martyr, 1622

  Read the first four acts of Massinger’s “Virgin Martyr,” and Gifford’s very agreeably written “Introduction.” The merits of the poet are certainly great; though, as usual, rather exaggerated by the editor. The style is most elegant; and, as has often been observed, modern to a miracle. There is great moral grandeur in the conception of the principal character, but no probability, no decorum, a grossness so rank as to be perfectly disgusting.

  The “Virgin martyr” is nothing but a tissue of instantaneous conversions to and from Paganism and Christianity. The only scenes of any real beauty and tenderness in this play are those between Dorothea and Angelo, her supposed friendless beggar-boy, but her guardian-angel in disguise, which are understood to be by Decker.

  The first act of the “Virgin Martyr” is as fine an act as I remember in any play.

  In the “Virgin Martyr,” he has followed the Spanish model of religious Autos, with many graces of language and a beautiful display of Christian heroism in Dorothea; but the tragedy is in many respects unpleasing.

  Massinger’s account of Theophilus’s conversion, will, we fear, make those who know any thing of that great crisis of the human spirit, suspect that Massinger’s experience thereof was but small: the fact which is most interesting is, the “Virgin Martyr” is one of the foulest plays known. Every pains has been taken to prove that the indecent scenes in the play were not written by Massinger, but by Dekker; on what grounds we know not. If Dekker assisted Massinger in the play, as he is said to have done, we are aware of no cannons of internal criticism, which will enable us to decide, as boldly as Mr. Gifford does, that all the indecency is Dekker’s, and all the poetry Massinger’s. He confesses (as indeed he is forced to do) that “Massinger himself is not free from dialogues of low wit and buffoonery;” and then, after calling the scenes in question “detestable ribaldry,” “a loathsome sorterkin, engendered of filth and dulness,” recommends them to the reader’s supreme scorn and contempt,—with which feelings the reader will doubtless regard them; but will also, if he be a thinking man, draw from them the following conclusions: that even if they be Dekker’s, (of which there is no proof,) Massinger was forced, in order to the success of his play, to pander to the public taste, by allowing Dekker to interpolate these villainies; that the play which, above all others of the seventeenth century, contains the most supra-lunar rosepink of piety, devotion, and purity, also contains the stupidest abominations of any extant play; and lastly, that those who reprinted it for its rosepink piety and purity, as a sample of the Christianity of that past golden age of High-churchmanship had to leave out about one third of the play, for fear of becoming amenable to the laws against abominable publications.

  Though it seems to have been popular at the time, the modern reader will probably think that, in this case at least, the religious element is a little out of place. An angel and a devil take an active part in the performance; miracles are worked on the stage; the unbelievers are so shockingly wicked, and the Christians so obtrusively good, that we—the worldly-minded—are sensible of a little recalcitration, unless we are disarmed by the simplicity of the whole performance.

  Dekker seems to have contributed the larger part of the play, including some very beautiful poetry as well as some grossly ribald talk. The action is simplicity itself; nor is there the slightest attempt at refining upon the clear purpose of the fable.

  The grace and tenderness of the Virgin’s part are much more in accordance with what is certainly Dekker’s than with what is certainly Massinger’s, and that either was quite capable of the Hircius and Spungius passages which have excited so much disgust and indignation—disgust and indignation which perhaps overlook the fact that they were no doubt inserted with the express purpose of heightening, by however clumsily designed a contrast, the virgin purity of Dorothea the saint.

The Unnatural Combat, 1639

  We read, with the strongest feelings of admiration, horror, and disgust, Massinger’s Tragedy of the “Unnatural Combat.” It is surprising that a poet of so much taste and judgment in his style, should have none in his story, characters, or manners. But it was with Massinger’s taste, as with Shakspeare’s genius, which is displayed with such prodigal magnificence in the parts, but never employed in the construction of the whole. No Englishman, after this play, ought ever to speak of the horrors of the German stage.

  The battle between the Father and Son, in the “Unnatural Combat,” and the dreadful parley which precedes it, are as powerfully expressed as they are imagined. Indeed, the genius of Massinger is, perhaps, more conspicuous in this Play, with all its faults, than in any other.

  In the “Unnatural Combat,” probably among the earliest of Massinger’s works, we find a greater energy, a bolder strain of figurative poetry, more command of terror, and perhaps of pity, than in any other of his dramas. But the dark shadows of crime and misery which overspread this tragedy belong to rather an earlier period of the English stage than that of Massinger, and were not congenial to his temper.

The Duke of Milan, 1623

  The most poetical of Massinger’s productions.

  Among the tragedies of Massinger, I should incline to prefer the “Duke of Milan.” The plot borrows enough from history to give it dignity, and to counterbalance in some measure the predominance of the passion of love which the invented parts of the drama exhibit. The characters of Sforza, Marcelia, and Francesco, are in Massinger’s best manner; the story is skilfully and not improbably developed; the pathos is deeper than we generally find in his writings; the eloquence of language, especially in the celebrated speech of Sforza before the Emperor has never been surpassed by him.

  Although unrelieved either by pathos or by humour, this tragedy powerfully depicts the operation of strong passions, while suggesting a novel intermixture of public and private motives of conduct.

The Bondman, 1623–38

  Of Massinger’s rhetorical ability this play furnishes abundant evidence; and it is at the same time the first among his works that suggests a deliberate intention on the part of the dramatist to provoke an application to current events and characters of the invective put by him into the mouths of his characters.

The Roman Actor, 1626–29

  Is, I think, Massinger’s best tragic effort; and the scene where Domitian murders Paris, with his tyrannical explanation of the deed, shows a greater conception of tragic poetry—a little cold and stately, a little Racinish or at least Cornelian rather than Shakesperian, but still passionate and worthy of the tragic stage—than anything that Massinger has done.

The Maid of Honour, 1632

  I think, that he really shows, by the best means in his power, a strong sense of the dignity of womanhood, and that his catastrophe is more satisfactory than the violent death or the consignment to an inferior lover which would have commended themselves to most Elizabethan dramatists.

  “The Maid of Honour” is beyond doubt to be reckoned among Massinger’s most attractive productions and those best according with the bent of his own nature. The comic character of “Signior Sylli, a foolish self-lover,” is at the same time unusually diverting, especially in his references to his family traditions. The Page is a specimen of a type for which Massinger had a special predilection.

  I was so enchanted with these plays of Massinger’s, but more especially with the one called “The Maid of Honor,” that I never rested till I had obtained from the management its revival on the stage. The part of Camiola is the only one that I ever selected for myself. “The Maid of Honor” succeeded on its first representation, but failed to attract audiences. Though less defective than most of the contemporaneous dramatic compositions, the play was still too deficient in interest to retain the favor of the public. The character of Camiola is extremely noble and striking, but that of her lover so unworthy of her that the interest she excites personally fails to inspire one with sympathy for her passion for him. The piece in this respect has a sort of moral incoherency, which appears to me, indeed, not an infrequent defect in the compositions of these great dramatic pre-Shakespearites.

The Picture, 1629–30

  The good sense, rational fondness, and chastised feeling, of the dialogue in which Matthias, a knight of Bohemia, going to the wars, in parting with his wife, shows her substantial reasons why he should go—make it more valuable than many of those scenes in which this writer has attempted a deeper passion and more tragical interest.

The Fatal Dowry, 1632

  A novelty of much interest, in the revival of Massinger’s tragedy of “The Fatal Dowry,” produced Wednesday, January 5th, 1825. The original work is one of very great power, but unhappily disfigured by scenes too gross for presentation before an audience making pretension to any degree of refinement. Sheil undertook the task of its purification, and in its adaptation, whilst maintaining the strictest fidelity to the story, substituted scenes which, in energy, passion, and dramatic power, fully equalled those on which they were grafted. The parts of Rochfort and Charolois were very well represented by Terry and Wallack, and in Romont opportunities were afforded for the display of energy and lofty bearing, to the full height of which I laboured, not unsuccessfully, to reach; but though a great writer says “Il n’y a point de hasard,” we often find results under the sway of casualties. The play was well acted, and enthusiastically applauded: its repetition for the following Tuesday was hailed most rapturously.

  My performance of “The Fair Penitent” was entirely ineffective, and did neither me nor the theater any service; the play itself is a feeble adaptation of Massinger’s powerful drama of “The Fatal Dowry,” and, as generally happens with such attempts to fit our old plays to our modern stage, the fundamentally objectionable nature of the story could not be reformed without much of the vigorous and terrible effect of the original treatment evaporating in the refining process. Mr. Macready revived Massinger’s fine play with considerable success, but both the matter and the manner of our dramatic ancestors is too robust for the audiences of our day, who nevertheless will go and see “Diane de Lys,” by a French company of actors, without wincing.

  “The Fatal Dowry” is Massinger’s highest effort in tragedy, and is—putting Shakespeare on one side—perhaps the most pathetic and most powerful of the plays written and produced in the great day of the drama in England. Seldom has there been seen upon the stage a story of more woe than that of Charalois. He is raised from abject misery, suddenly and unexpectedly, to most dazzling heights of prosperity, and then, by a revolution of the wheel of fortune, is plunged into such desperate and cureless ruin, and into such an untimely death; and all his woe is caused by the vile, fair woman who had been given to him as wife. Oh, the pity of it all! It is true tragedy. In Charalois a great, fine character is driven by dishonour into piteous, undeserved wreck.

The New Way to Pay Old Debts, 1633

  Pardon, I beseech you, my boldness in presuming to shelter this comedy under the wings of your Lordship’s favour and protection. I am not ignorant (having never yet deserved you in my service) that it cannot but meet with a severe construction if, in the clemency of your noble disposition, you fashion not a better defence for me than I can fancy for myself … nor am I wholly lost in my hopes, but that your Honour (who have ever expressed yourself a favourer and friend to the Muses) may vouchsafe, in your gracious acceptance of this trifle, to give me encouragement to present you with some laboured works, and of a higher strain, hereafter. I was born a devoted servant to the thrice noble family of your incomparable lady, and am most ambitious, but with a becoming distance, to be known to your Lordship, which, if you will please to admit, I shall embrace it as a bounty, that while I live shall oblige me to acknowledge you for my noble patron, and profess myself to be

  It has been several times revived, particularly at Drury Lane, and since at Covent Garden, to assist Henderson, who performed sir Giles Overreach with judgment; but injudicious pruning always wounds a good tree, and this kind of stab did the reputation of Massinger sustain in both this case and in other cases.

  There is, it is true, one remarkable exception to the general weakness of Massinger’s characters. The vigour with which Sir Giles Overreach is set forth has made him the one well-known figure in Massinger’s gallery, and the “New Way to Pay Old Debts” showed, in consequence, more vitality than any of his other plays. Much praise has been given, and not more than enough, to the originality and force of the conception. The conventional miser is elevated into a great man by a kind of inverse heroism, and made terrible instead of contemptible. But it is equally plain that here, too, Massinger fails to project himself fairly into his villain. His rants are singularly forcible, but they are clearly what other people would think about him, not what he would really think, still less what he would say, of himself.

  His “New Way to pay Old Debts” is a very effective play, though in the reading far less interesting and pleasing than most of the others. Yet there are power and passion in it, even if the power be somewhat melodramatic, and the passion of an ignoble type. In one respect he was truly a poet—his conceptions of character were ideal; but his diction, though full of dignity and never commonplace, lacks the charm of the inspired and inspiring word, the relief of the picturesque image that comes so naturally to the help of Fletcher.

  Is the example of the entire Elizabethan and Jacobean drama outside Shakespeare which has longest held its place on the modern stage.

  Has deservedly retained its popularity for theatrical purposes to our own day. Much of this popularity is due to the character of Sir Giles Overreach, whose prosperity and overthrow give just that kind of dramatic satisfaction which is wanting in most of the later Elizabethan plays. The Old miser, watching with grim satisfaction the victims struggling in the meshes of his net, is a powerfully drawn and intensely living personality. Overreach’s madness is too incidental to be an adequate close to the drama, the general moral purpose of which is set forth in Lord Lovel’s speech.

The City Madam, 1632–59

  This bitter satire against the city women for aping the fashions of the court ladies must have been peculiarly gratifying to the females of the Herbert family and the rest of Massinger’s noble patrons and patronesses.

  I cannot agree with the contention that either the versification or any other internal indication points to the authorship of any other writer than Massinger; nor bring myself to believe that this play was not written by the author of “A New Way to Pay Old Debts,” with which it is distinctly congate in sentiment.

A Very Woman, 1634–55

  The “Very Woman” is, I think, one of the most perfect plays we have.

The Bashful Lover, 1636–55

  No other of Massinger’s plays commends itself by a more effective mixture of abundant incident and noble sentiment than this romantic drama, which from a theatrical point of view well deserved the success it achieved…. The elevation of sentiment that marks Massinger’s last work justly entitles it to a more than passing notice among the productions of the later Elisabethan drama.

General

  Notwithstanding my partiality for this kind of reading, and some pains I had taken to gratify it, I never heard of Massinger till about two years ago, when a friend of mine, who knew my inclination, lent me a copy of his works!

  If, in Beaumont and Fletcher, we lament that authors sometimes attempt too much, in Massinger, we have a proof that they may do too little. This very charming writer has seldom been allowed the merit he possessed, perhaps, because he was a stranger to presumption, vanity, and those other qualities which often procure for an author more fame than he deserves; posterity, however, generally sets the matter right; which, in the opinions of all judges of genius and taste, has placed Massinger very little behind Jonson, and far before Beaumont and Fletcher.

  Who approached to Shakespeare in dignity?

  Massinger had not the higher requisites of his art in anything like the degree in which they were possessed by Ford, Webster, Tourneur, Heywood, and others. He never shakes or disturbs the mind with grief. He is read with composure and placid delight. He wrote with that equability of all the passions, which made his English style the purest and most free from violent metaphors and harsh constructions, of any of the dramatists who were his contemporaries.

  The fame of Massinger has lately been revived by an edition of his works. Some literary men wish to rank him above Beaumont and Fletcher, as if he had approached more closely to the excellence of Shakspeare. I cannot find this. He appears to me to have the greatest resemblance to Beaumont and Fletcher in the plan of the pieces, in the tone of manners, and even in the language and negligences of versification. I would not undertake to decide, from internal symptoms, whether a play belonged to Massinger, or Beaumont and Fletcher.

  Massinger, like Fletcher, pursued the path in which Shakspeare had preceded him with such imperishable glory; but he wants the tenderness and wit of the former, and that splendour of imagination and that dominion over the passions, which characterise the latter. He has, however, qualities of his own, sufficiently great and attractive, to gift him with the envied lot of being contemplated, in union with these two bards, as one of the chief pillars and supporters of the Romantic drama. He exhibits, in the first place, a perfectibility, both in diction and versification, of which we have, in dramatic poesy at least, no corresponding example. There is a transparency and perspicuity in the texture of his composition, a sweetness, harmony, and ductility, together with a blended strength and ease in the structure of his metre, which, in his best performances, delight, and never satiate the ear. To this, in some degree technical merit, must be added a spirit of commanding eloquence, a dignity and force of thought, which, while they approach the precincts of sublimity, and indicate great depth and clearness of intellect, show, by the nervous elegance of language in which they are clothed, a combination and comprehension of talent of very unfrequent occurrence.

  With regard to Massinger, observe, 1. The vein of satire on the times; but this is not as in Shakspere, where the natures evolve themselves according to their incidental disproportions, from excess, deficiency, or mislocation, of one or more of the component elements; but is merely satire on what is attributed to them by others. 2. His excellent metre—a better model for dramatists in general to imitate than Shakspere’s,—even if a dramatic taste existed in the frequenters of the stage, and could be gratified in the present size and management, or rather mismanagement, of the two patent theatres. I do not mean that Massinger’s verse is superior to Shakspere’s or equal to it. Far from it; but it is much more easily constructed and may be more successfully adopted by writers in the present day. It is the nearest approach to the language of real life at all compatible with a fixed metre…. I like Massinger’s comedies better than his tragedies, although where the situation requires it, he often rises into the truly tragic and pathetic. He excels in narration, and for the most part displays his mere story with skill. But he is not a poet of high imagination; he is like a Flemish painter, in whose delineations objects appear as they do in nature, have the same force and truth, and produce the same effect upon the spectator.

  Massinger is distinguished for the harmony and dignity of his dramatic eloquence. Many of his plots, it is true, are liable to heavy exceptions…. In a general view, nevertheless, Massinger has more art and judgment in the serious drama than any of the other successors of Shakspeare. His incidents are less entangled than those of Fletcher, and the scene of his action is more clearly thrown open for the free evolution of character. Fletcher strikes the imagination with more vivacity, but more irregularly, and amidst embarrassing positions of his own choosing. Massinger puts forth his strength more collectively. Fletcher has more action and character in his drama, and leaves a greater variety of impressions upon the mind. His fancy is more volatile and surprising, but then he often blends disappointment with our surprise, and parts with the consistency of his characters even to the occasionally apparent loss of their identity. This is not the case with Massinger. It is true that Massinger excels more in description and declamation than in the forcible utterance of the heart, and in giving character the warm colouring of passion. Still, not to speak of his one distinguished hero in comedy, he has delineated several tragic characters with strong and interesting traits. They are chiefly proud spirits. Poor himself, and struggling under the rich man’s contumely, we may conceive it to have been the solace of his neglected existence to picture worth and magnanimity breaking through external disadvantages, and making their way to love and admiration.

  Massinger makes an impression by hardness and repulsiveness of manner. In the intellectual processes which he delights to describe, “reason panders will;” he fixes arbitrarily on some object which there is no motive to pursue, or every motive combined against it, and then by screwing up his heroes or heroines to the deliberate and blind accomplishment of this, thinks to arrive at “the true pathos and sublime of human life.” That is not the way. He seldom touches the heart or kindles the fancy. It is in vain to hope to excite much sympathy with convulsive efforts of the will, or intricate contrivances of the understanding, to obtain that which is better left alone, and where the interest arises principally from the conflict between the absurdity of the passion and the obstinacy with which it is persisted in. For the most part, his villains are a sort of lusus naturæ; his impassioned characters are like drunkards or madmen. Their conduct is extreme and outrageous, their motives unaccountable and weak; their misfortunes are without necessity, and their crimes without temptation, to ordinary apprehensions. I do not say that this is invariably the case in all Massinger’s scenes, but I think it will be found that a principle of playing at cross-purposes is the ruling passion throughout most of them.

  The public are much better acquainted with the writings of Massinger than with those of most of his contemporaries: for which distinction he is mainly indebted to the admirable manner in which he has been edited by Mr. Gifford, and to the circumstance of some of his Plays having been illustrated on the Stage by the talents of a popular Actor. I cannot, however, quite agree with Mr. Gifford, when he ranks this Author immediately after Shakspeare. He certainly yields in versatility of talent to Beaumont and Fletcher, whose Comic genius was very great; and in feeling and nature, I by no means think his Tragedies equal theirs, or to Ford’s, or Webster’s. Massinger excelled in working up a single scene forcibly and effectively, rather than in managing his plots skilfully, or in delineating characters faithfully, and naturally. His catastrophes are sometimes brought about in a very improbable and unnatural manner…. The sweetness and purity of his style, was not surpassed even in his own days. His choice and management of imagery is generally very happy; excepting that he is apt to pursue a favourite idea too long. His descriptive powers were also very considerable, the clearness and distinctness with which he places objects before our eyes, might furnish models for a Painter.

  The most striking excellence of this poet is his conception of character; and in this I must incline to place him above Fletcher, and, if I may venture to say it, even above Jonson. He is free from the hard outline of the one, and the negligent looseness of the other. He has indeed no great variety, and sometimes repeats, with such bare modifications as the story demands, the type of his first design…. The poetical talents of Massinger were very considerable, his taste superior to that of his contemporaries; the coloring of his imagery is rarely overcharged; a certain redundancy, as some may account it, gives fulness, or what the painters call impasto, to his style, and, if it might not always conduce to effect on the stage, is on the whole suitable to the character of his composition. The comic powers of this writer are not on a level with the serious: with some degree of humorous conception, he is too apt to aim at exciting ridicule by caricature; and his dialogue wants altogether the sparkling wit of Shakspeare and Fletcher…. Massinger, as a tragic writer, appears to me second only to Shakspeare: in the higher comedy, I can hardly think him inferior to Jonson. In wit and sprightly dialogue, as well as in knowledge of theatrical effect, he falls very much below Fletcher.

  There can be no doubt that Massinger admired and studied Shakspeare. In the haste of composition, his mind turned up many thoughts and phrases of the elder writer, in a more or less perfect state of preservation, but he was neither a plagiarist nor an imitator. His style, conduct, characterization, and metre, are perfectly distinct. No serious dramatist of the age owed Shakspeare so little…. Massinger’s excellence—a great and beautiful excellence it is—was in the expression of virtue, in its probation, its strife, its victory. He could not, like Shakspeare, invest the perverted will with the terrors of a magnificent intellect, or bestow the cestus of poetry on simple unconscious loveliness.

  Writes all like a giant—a dry-eyed giant. He is too ostentatiously strong for flexibility, and too heavy for rapidity, and monotonous through his perpetual final trochee; his gesture and enunciation are slow and majestic.

  In expressing the dignity of virtue, and in showing greatness of soul rising superior to circumstance and fate, Massinger exhibits so peculiar a vigour and felicity, that it is impossible not to conceive such delineations (in which the poet delighted) to be a reflection of his own proud and patient soul, and perhaps, too, but too true a memorial of “the rich man’s scorn, the proud man’s contumely,” which he had himself undergone. In the tender and pathetic Massinger had no mastery; in the moral gloom of guilt, in the crowded agony of remorse, in painting the storm and tempest of the moral atmosphere, he is undoubtedly a great and mighty artist; and in expressing the sentiments of dignity and virtue, cast down but not humbled by undeserved misfortune, he is almost unequalled. His versification, though never flowingly harmonious, is skilful and learned, an appropriate vehicle for the elevation of the sentiments; and in the description of rich and splendid scenes he is peculiarly powerful and impressive.

  When Fox was a young man, a copy of Massinger accidentally fell into his hands: he read it, and, for some time after, could talk of nothing but Massinger.

  Of the Jacoban, as distinct from the Elizabethan dramatists, the greatest surviving representative was undoubtedly Massinger,—the modest and manly Massinger.

  Massinger possessed a large though not especially poetic mind, and a temperament equable rather than energetic. He lacked strong passions, vivid conceptions, creative imagination. In reading him we feel that the exulting, vigorous life of the drama of the age has begun to decay. But though he has been excelled by obscurer writers in special qualities of genius, he still attaches us by the harmony of his powers, and the uniformity of his excellence. The plot, style, and characters of one of his dramas all conduce to a common interest. His plays, indeed, are novels in dialogue. They rarely thrill, startle, or kindle us, but, as Lamb says, “are read with composure and placid delight.”… Massinger’s style, though it does not evince a single great quality of the poet, has always charmed English readers by its dignity, flexibility, elegance, clearness, and ease. His metre and rhythm Coleridge pronounces incomparably good. Still his verse, with all its merits, is smooth rather than melodious; the thoughts are not born in music, but mechanically set to a tune; and even its majestic flow is frequently purchased at the expense of dramatic closeness to character and passion.

  After Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Jonson, the next great name in our drama is that of Philip Massinger…. Massinger, like Jonson, had received a learned education, and his classic reading has colored his style and manner; but he had scarcely so much originality of genius as Jonson. He is a very eloquent writer, but has little power of high imagination or pathos, and still less wit or comic power.

  The reader who peruses Massinger can hardly fail to be charmed with the force and chaste elegance of his language, happily yet sparingly enriched with choice classical allusions, and none of his contemporaries knew so well the art of developing his plot in such a way as to surprise and delight the spectator, while meting out strict poetical justice to all. His declamatory speeches are very fine models of their kind; and some of his characters, especially his females, are elaborated with great care. Massinger’s style and versification are strongly marked with his own peculiar manner; yet so little is that manner known, even to professed scholars, that in most of the current manuals and books of “specimens,” a scene from “The Virgin Martyr,” undoubtedly written by Decker, is given as an example of his brother poet’s composition!

  The greatest master of characterization of that age next to Shakespeare is certainly Massinger. Sir Giles Overreach and Luke are both real men. Luke is a true piece of nature, not all black-souled, nor all white, but of a mixed complexion. But the area which Massinger could make his own was of limited dimensions. When he stepped across its limits, his strength failed him, and he was even as other men.

  His view of life, indeed, is not only grave, but has a distinct religious colouring…. He is throughout a sentimentalist and a rhetorician. He is not, like the greatest men, dominated by thoughts and emotions which force him to give them external embodiment in life-like symbols. He is rather a man of much real feeling and extraordinary facility of utterance, who finds in his stories convenient occasions for indulging in elaborate didactic utterances upon moral topics…. When we turn to Massinger, this boundless vigour has disappeared. The blood has grown cool. The tyrant no longer forces us to admiration by the fulness of his vitality, and the magnificence of his contempt for law. Whether for good or bad, he is comparatively a poor creature. He has developed an uneasy conscience, and even whilst affecting to defy the law, trembles at the thought of an approaching retribution. His boasts have a shrill, querulous note in them. His creator does not fully sympathise with his passion. Massinger cannot throw himself into the situation; and is anxious to dwell upon the obvious moral considerations which prove such characters to be decidedly inconvenient members of society for their tamer neighbours. He is of course the more in accordance with a correct code of morality, but fails correspondingly in dramatic force and brilliance of colour…. Massinger’s remarkable flow of genuine eloquence, his real dignity of sentiment, his sympathy for virtuous motive, entitle him to respect; but we cannot be blind to the defect which keeps his work below the level of his greatest contemporaries. It is, in one word, a want of vital force.

  He was the Gray of his generation—greater than Gray, inasmuch as his generation was greater than Gray’s—a man of large, open, fertile, and versatile mind…. All Massinger’s characteristics are those of a widely sympathetic man, with a genial propensity to laughter. He has written several very obscene passages, such as the courtship of Asotus by Corisca in “The Bondman,” but they are all pervaded by genuine humour; and a countless number of his scenes, such as that between Wellborn and Marrall in “A New Way to Pay Old Debts,” are irresistibly laughable. It may perhaps be said with justice that there is often a certain serious motive underlying Massinger’s humour, which connects itself with the earnestness of his distressed life; but humour he undoubtedly had, and that of the most ebullient and irrepressible sort.

  Amongst the Caroline dramatists Massinger takes a high place. If it cannot be said of his works, that

	“Every word is thought
	And every thought is pure,”

his coarseness is merely adventitious. The main intention of his work is moral. He never descends to paint immoral intention as virtuous because it does not succeed in converting itself into vicious act. It will probably be a surprise even to those who are far better acquainted with the history of literature than I can pretend to be, that in many of Massinger’s plays we have a treatment of the politics of the day so plain and transparent, that any one who possesses only a slight acquaintance with the history of the reigns of the first two Stuarts can read it at a glance. It is quite unintelligible to me that, with the exception of a few cursory words in Mr. Ward’s “History of Dramatic Literature,” no previous inquirer should have stumbled on a fact so obvious.

	Clouds here and there arisen an hour past noon
	Checkered our English heaven with lengthening bars
	And shadow and sound of wheel-winged thunder-cars
	Assembling strength to put forth tempest soon,
	When the clear still warm concord of thy tune
	Rose under skies unscared by reddening Mars,
	Yet, like a sound of silver speech of stars,
	With full mild flame as of the mellowing moon,
	Grave and great-hearted Massinger, thy face
	High melancholy lights with loftier grace
	Than gilds the brows of revel: sad and wise,
	The spirit of thought that moved thy deeper song,
	Sorrow serene in soft calm scorn of wrong,
	Speaks patience yet from thy majestic eyes.

  He had a high, a varied, and a fertile imagination. He had, and was the last to have, an extensive and versatile command of blank verse, never perhaps reaching the most perfect mastery of Marlowe or of Shakespere, but singularly free from monotony, and often both harmonious and dignified. He could deal, and deal well, with a large range of subjects; and if he never ascends to the height of a De Flores or a Bellafront, he never descends to the depths in which both Middleton and Dekker too often complacently wallow. Unless we are to count by mere flashes, he must, I think, rank after Shakespere, Fletcher, and Jonson among his fellows; and this I say, honestly avowing that I have nothing like the enthusiasm for him that I have for Webster, or for Dekker, or for Middleton. We may no doubt allow too much for bulk of work, for sustained excellence at a certain level, and for general competence as against momentary excellence. But we may also allow far too little; and this has perhaps been the general tendency of later criticism in regard to Massinger. It is unfortunate that he never succeeded in making as perfect a single expression of his tragic ability as he did of his comic, for the former was, I incline to think, the higher of the two. But many of his plays are lost, and many of those which remain come near to such excellence. It is by no means impossible that Massinger may have lost incomparably by the misdeeds of the constantly execrated, but never to be execrated enough, minion of that careless herald.

  To me Massinger is one of the most interesting as well as one of the most delightful of the old dramatists, not so much for his passion or power, though at times he reaches both, as for the love he shows for those things that are lovely and of good report in human nature, for his sympathy with what is generous and high-minded and honorable, and for his equable flow of a good every-day kind of poetry with few rapids or cataracts, but singularly soothing and companionable. The Latin adjective for gentleman, generosus, fits him aptly. His plots are generally excellent; his versification masterly, with skilful breaks and pauses, capable of every needful variety of emotion; and his dialogue easy, natural, and sprightly, subsiding in the proper places to a refreshing conversational tone. This graceful art was one seldom learned by any of those who may be fairly put in comparison with him.

  The Massinger weak line, which often is as hard to distinguish from measured prose as the iambics of Dickens or Musæus are from “Thalaba” or “Queen Mab” verse.

  Generally speaking, he gives an impression of hardness, and seldom deviates into tender pathos. But his most characteristic trait is a peculiarly corrupt tone of thought, even in his heroines when they are intended as models of virtue. Their morality lies entirely in obedience to outward observances, and in no inner principle. Purity is not to be found in his world, and his obscenity seems often purposeless. The warning in his “Roman Actor,” i. 3, that his portrayal of evil was intended to convey a wholesome reproof to the evil-minded, is unconvincing. Massinger’s language is generally full and flowing, with more of a rhetorical than a dramatic character. In a contemporary poem “On the Time-Poets” (“Choyce Drollery, 1656”) it is said of him that his

	Easy Pegasus will amble o’er
	Some threescore miles of Fancy in an hour.

… In his early work he introduces very much prose and rhyme, but in his later work he confines himself to blank verse. His blank verse shows a larger proportion of run-on lines and double endings in harmonious union than any contemporary author. Cartwright and Tourneur have more run-on lines, but not so many double endings. Fletcher has more double endings, but very few run-on lines. Shakespeare and Beaumont alone exhibit a somewhat similar metrical style.

  Nothing exemplifies more curiously the rapidity of development in poetical literature at the opening of the seventeenth century than the fact that the same brief reign which saw the last perfection placed on the edifice of Elizabethan drama saw also the products of the pen of Massinger. For, however much we may respect the activity of this remarkable man, however warmly we may acknowledge the power of his invention, the skill and energy with which he composed, and however agreeable his plays may appear to us if we compare them with what succeeded them in a single generation, there can be no question that the decline in the essential parts of poetry from Webster or Tourneur, to go no further back, to Massinger is very abrupt. Mr. Leslie Stephen has noted in this playwright “a certain hectic flush, symptomatic of approaching decay,” and we may even go further and discover in him a leaden pallor, the sign of decreasing vitality. The “hectic flush” seems to me to belong more properly to his immediate successors, who do not come within the scope of this volume, to Ford, with his morbid sensibility, and to Shirley, with his mechanical ornament, than to Massinger, where the decline chiefly shows itself in the negation of qualities, the absence of what is brilliant, eccentric, and passionate. The sentimental and rhetorical drama of Massinger has its excellent points, but it is dominated by the feeling that the burning summer of poetry is over, and that a russet season is letting us down gently towards the dull uniformity of winter. Interesting and specious as Massinger is, we cannot avoid the impression that he is preparing us for that dramatic destitution which was to accompany the Commonwealth.

  His versification and language are flexible and strong, “and seem to rise out of the passions he describes.” He speaks the tongue of real life. He is greater than he seems to be. Like Fletcher, there is a steady equality in his work. Coarse, even foul as he is in speech, he is the most moral of the secondary dramatists. Nowhere is his work so forcible as when he represents the brave man struggling through trial to victory, the pure woman suffering for the sake of truth and love; or when he describes the terrors that conscience brings on injustice and cruelty.

  Massinger’s wide range of subjects, the ingenuity and skill with which most of his plays are constructed, and the forcible rhetoric of his dialogues, entitle him to a high place in the group of dramatists that includes Webster, Middleton, and Dekker. The claim to a higher place, which has sometimes been put forward on his behalf, may not improbably have arisen from the fact that his works were efficiently edited earlier than those of most of the later Elizabethan dramatists. If he rarely sinks below a certain level of excellence, he seldom startles us with any sudden flash of inspiration. A tone of sombreness, which passes at times into one of sadness, pervades his entire work; and even in his comedies it is but a transient smile that flickers at rare intervals over the face of one whose moral purpose has grown through the discipline of poverty. A certain didactic aim is indeed rarely absent, although seldom unduly prominent, and if it is undeniable that his dramas are at times grossly indecent and overstrained in their delineation of vice and villainy, we are conscious that behind them there is a sane and healthy mind with a manly respect for virtue and goodness.

  We possess fifteen plays, written, with some aid, by Massinger, and know of the existence of eighteen others which are irrevocably lost. This loss occurred through the criminal carelessness of one John Warburton, F.R.S., F.S.A., Somerset Herald, and an ex-exciseman, who had collected fifty-five genuine unpublished dramas, of the best period, which he gave into the custody of his cook, who used them for coverings for pastry, or for lighting the kitchen fire. This abominable holocaust of such priceless material occurred in the middle of last century. Warburton, a mean, illiterate man, deserves almost more obloquy than does the infamous Gastrell, who destroyed New Place, and cut down Shakespeare’s mulberry-tree.