MASSINGER, PHILIP (1583-164o), English dramatist, son of Arthur Massinger or Messanger, was baptized at St.
Thomas's, Salisbury, on Nov. 24, 1583. He entered St. Alban hall, Oxford, in 1602. His father was attached to the household of the 2nd Earl of Pembroke, but on the succession of William Herbert in 16oi it has been suggested that the patronage ceased. On the other hand, a Wood says that he went to Oxford at Lord Pembroke's expense. Massinger left Oxford without a degree in 1606. His father had died in 1603, and he was perhaps dependent on his own exertions. He went to London to work as a drama tist, 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 drama tists. From 1613 Massinger apparently worked regularly with John Fletcher, although in editions of Beaumont and Fletcher's works his co-operation is usually unrecognized.
Sir Aston Cokayne, Massinger's 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.
After Philip Henslowe's death in 1616 Massinger and Fletcher began to write for the King's Men. Between 1623 and 1626 Massinger produced unaided for the Lady Elizabeth's Men then playing at the Cockpit three pieces, The Parliament of Love, The Bondman and The Renegado. With the exception of these plays and The Great Duke of Florence, produced in 1627 by the Queen's servants, Massinger continued to write regularly for the King's Men until his death. S. R. Gardiner, in an essay on "The Political Element in Massinger" (Contemp. Review, Aug. 1876), maintained that Massinger's dramas are before all else political.
In 1631 Sir Henry Herbert, the master of the revels, refused to license an unnamed play by Massinger because of "dangerous matter as the deposing of Sebastian, King of Portugal," calculated presumably to endanger good relations between England and Spain. There is little doubt that this was the same piece as Believe as You List, in which time and place are changed, Anti ochus being substituted for Sebastian, and Rome for Spain.
Massinger seems to have supported the democratic views of his patron, the Earl of Montgomery, who was an enemy of Buckingham. In The Bondman, dealing with the history of
Timoleon, Buckingham is satirized as Gisco. The servility towards the Crown displayed in Beaumont and Fletcher's plays reflected the temper of the court of James I. The attitude of Massinger's heroes and heroines towards kings is very different. Camiola's remarks on the limitations of the royal prerogative (Maid of Honour, act Iv., sc. v.) could hardly be acceptable at court.
Massinger died suddenly at his house near the Globe theatre, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Saviour's, Southwark, on March 18, 1640.
The supposition that Massinger was a Roman Catholic rests upon three of his plays, The Virgin Martyr (licensed 162o), The Renegado (licensed 1624) and The Maid of Honour (c. 1621). The Virgin Martyr, which deals with the martyrdom of Doro thea in the time of Diocletian, cannot be relied on. 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.
His plays have generally an obvious moral intention. He sets himself to work out a series of ethical problems through a succes sion of ingenious and effective plots. In the art of construction he has, indeed, few rivals. But the virtue of his heroes and hero ines 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 exi gencies of the plot. The heroes are too good, and the villains too wicked to be quite convincing. Moreover their respective good ness and villainy are too often represented as extraneous to them selves. This defect of characterization shows that English drama had already begun to decline. 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 com mercial 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 Massinger's 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.