Massinger

Dr Martin Garrett, Martin Garrett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134967575
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Martin Garrett's comprehensive collection presents and explains the history of the critical reception to Massinger's work from the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth century. The volume includes extensive selections from the writings of Pepys, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Lamb and Swinburne, as well as briefer comments from Scott, Byron and Keats. Responses to Massinger's plays from writers as diverse as Boswell, Mrs Thrale, Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are discussed in Martin Garrett's introduction, which also includes an account of the plays' original political and theatrical context.

TEXTS

1. Nathan Field, Robert Daborne, and Philip Massinger

c. 1613

 

The ‘tripartite letter’ which the three playwrights sent their employer Philip Henslowe was first published by Edmond Malone in 1790. It tells us little or nothing about contemporary responses to Massinger's work, but is included here because of its currency in the nineteenth century as a romantically ‘melancholy’ document (see Introduction, pp.27, 35–6).

Field (1587–1619/20) was one of the leading actors of his day as well as author of two unaided comedies, a number of collaborations with Fletcher and Massinger, and The Fatal Dowry (c.1617–19) with Massinger. Less is known of Daborne (?-1628?), only two of whose plays survive.

EG, vol.1, p.xvii.

 

Mr Hinchlow

You understand o^r vnfortunate extremitie, and I doe not thincke you so void of christianitie, but that you would throw so much money into the Thames as wee request now of you; rather then endanger so many innocent liues; you know there is x¹ more at least to be receaued of you for the play, wee desire you to lend vs v^l. of that, w^ch shall be allowed to you w^thout w^ch wee cannot bee bayled, nor I play any more till this bee dispatch'd, it will loose you xx^l. ere the end of the next weeke, beside the hinderance of the next new play, pray S^r Consider our Cases w^th humanitie, and now giue vs cause to acknowledge you our true freind in time of neede; wee haue entreated M^r Dauison to deliuer this note, as well to wittnesse yo^r loue as o^r promises, and allwayes acknowledgment to be euer

yo^r most thanckfull; and louing freinds,

Nat: Field

The mony shall be abated out of the mony remayns for the play of m^r Fletcher & owrs

Rob: Daborne

I have ever founde yow a true lovinge freind to mee & in soe small a suite it beeinge honest I hope yow will not faile vs.

Philip Massinger

To our most loving friend, Mr Philip Hinchlow, esquire, These.

2. John Taylor

1620

 

In The Praise of Hemp-Seed (1620) John Taylor (1578–1653), Thames boatman and ‘water-poet’, celebrates paper's preservation of authors old and new. The reference to Massinger suggests that he was well known earlier than might otherwise be expected (his first known non-collaborative plays probably date from 1621 at earliest); it seems that his work with Fletcher is, unusually, receiving acknowledgement. All the Workes of lohn Taylor the Water Poet, London, 1630, p.72.

 

And many there are liuing at this day

Which doe in paper their true worth display:

As Dauis, Drayton, and the learned Dun,

Johnson, and Chapman, Marston, Middleton,

With Rowley, Fletcher, Withers, Massinger,

Heywood, and all the rest where e're they are,

Must say their lines but for the paper sheete

Had scarcely ground, whereon to set their feete.

3. Sir Thomas Jay

1629, 1630, 1633

Jay (?1598–1646) was M.P. for Netheravon in Wiltshire and Keeper of the King's Armouries (see further Donald Lawless, ‘Sir Thomas Jay (Jeay)’, Notes and Queries, vol.205, 1960, p.30). He was one of the three ‘much Honoured, and most true Friends’ to whom Massinger dedicated The Roman Actor in 1629.

See Introduction, pp.5–6, for the context of Jay's verses in the ‘Untun'd Kennell’ quarrel.

EG, vol.3, pp.16, 196–7, and vol.2, p.296.

(a) The Roman Actor (1629).

To his deare Friend the Author.

[Signed ‘T.l.’].

I AM no great admirer of the Playes,
Poets, or Actors, that are now adayes:
Yet in this Worke of thine me thinkes I see
Sufficient reason for Idolatrie.
Each line thou hast taught CEASAR is, as high
As Hee could speake, when groueling Flatterie,
And His own pride (forgetting Heavens rod)
By his Edicts stil'd himselfe great Lord and God.
By thee againe the Lawrell crownes His Head;
And thus reviu'd, who can affirme him dead?

Such power lyes in this loftie straine as can

Giue Swords, and legions to DOMITIAN.

And when thy PARIS pleades in the defence

Of Actors, every grace, and excellence

Of Argument for that subject, are by Thee

Contracted in a sweete Epitome.

Nor doe thy Women the tyr'd Hearers vexe,

With language no way proper to their sexe.

lust like a cunning Painter thou lets fall

Copies more faire then the Originall.

I'll adde but this. From all the moderne Playes

The Stage hath lately borne, this winnes the Bayes.

And if it come to tryall boldly looke

To carrie it cleere, Thy witnesse being thy Booke.

(b) The Picture (1630)

To his worthy friend M^r. Philip Massinger, vpon his Tragœcomœdie stiled, The Picture.

Me thinkes I heere some busy Criticke say

Who's this that singly vshers on this Play?

‘Tis boldnes I confesse, and yet perchance

It may be constur'd love, not arrogance.

I do not heere vpon this leafe intrude

By praysing one, to wrong a multitude.

Nor do I thinke that all are tyed to be

(Forc'd by my vote) in the same creed with me.

Each man hath liberty to iudge; free will,

At his owne pleasure to speake good, or ill.

But yet your Muse alreadie's knowne so well

Her ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES
• Title Page
• Copyright
• General Editor's Preface
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Notes on the Text
• 1 Nathan Field, Robert Daborne, and Philip Massinger, letter to Philip Henslowe, c. 1613
• 2 John Taylor, from The Praise of Hemp-Seed, 1620
• 3 Sir Thomas Jay
• 4 Thomas May, poem published with The Roman Actor, 1629
• 5 Philip Massinger, Prologue to The Maid of Honour, 1630
• 6 William Davenant(?), ‘To my honored ffriend Mr Thomas Carew’, 1630
• 7 Philip Massinger, ‘A Charme for a Libeller’, 1630
• 8 Sir Henry Herbert
• 9 William Heminge, elegy on Thomas Randolph’s finger, 1631-2
• 10 Sir Aston Cokaine
• 11 Wit’S Recreations, ‘To Mr. Philip Massinger’, 1640
• 12 Abraham Wright, ‘Excerpta quaedam per A.W.Adolescentem’, c. 1640
• 13 Philip Kynder, from The Surfeit to ABC, 1656
• 14 Samuel Pepys, Diary
• 15 Gerard Langbaine, from An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, 1691
• 16 Anthony Wood, from Athenae Oxonienses, 1691
• 17 Nicholas Rowe, from The Fair Penitent, 1703
• 18 Oliver Goldsmith, review of Thomas Coxeter (ed.), The Dramatic Works of Philip Massinger, The Critical Review, July 1759
• 19 George Colman, Critical Reflections on the Old English Dramatick Writers, 1761
• 20 Thomas Davies, Some Account of the Life of Philip Massinger, 1779
• 21 Unsigned reviews of The Bondman, 1779
• 22 Henry Bate, Advertisement to The Magic Picture, 1783
• 23 Unsigned reviews of The Magic Picture, 1783
• 24 Richard Cumberland, from The Observer, 1786
• 25 Charles Lamb
• 26 William Gifford, from Introduction to The Plays of Philip Massinger, 1805
• 27 Unsigned review of Gifford’s edition, The Edinburgh Review, April-July 1808
• 28 William Gifford, from Introduction to The Plays of Philip Massinger, 1813
• 29 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• 30 Sir James Bland Burges, from Riches; or the Wife and Brother, 1810
• 31 Sir Walter Scott
• 32 Unsigned review of A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The Times, January 1816
• 33 William Hazlitt
• 34 John Hamilton Reynolds
• 35 Unsigned Advertisement to Beauties of Massinger, 1817
• 36 John Keats
• 37 George Gordon, Lord Byron, letter to John Murray, August 1819
• 38 Thomas Campbell, from Essay on English Poetry, 1819
• 39 Thomas Lovell Beddoes
• 40 Richard Lalor Sheil(?), from The Fatal Dowry, 1825
• 41 Henry Neele, from Lectures on English Poetry, 1827
• 42 Henry Hallam, from An Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 1839
• 43 Hartley Coleridge, from Introduction to The Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford, 1840
• 44 From The City Madam, 1844
• 45 Edwin P.Whipple, from lectures on Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford and Massinger, 1859
• 46 Sir Adolphus William Ward, from A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne, 1875
• 47 Sir Leslie Stephen, ‘Massinger’, 1877
• 48 Frances Ann Kemble, from Record of a Girlhood, 1878
• 49 Algernon Charles Swinburne
• 50 James Russell Lowell, from The Old English Dramatists, 1887
• 51 Arthur Symons, Introduction to Philip Massinger, 1887
• 52 Edmund Gosse, from The Jacobean Poets, 1894
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX