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64-434: Philip Massinger (1583 – 17 March 1640) was an English dramatist . His finely plotted plays, including A New Way to Pay Old Debts , The City Madam , and The Roman Actor , are noted for their satire and realism , and their political and social themes. The son of Arthur Massinger or Messanger, he was baptised at St. Thomas's Salisbury on 24 November 1583. He apparently belonged to an old Salisbury family, for

128-475: A murder mystery play which is the longest-running West End show , it has by far the longest run of any play in the world, with its 29,500th performance having taken place as of February 2024. Contemporary playwrights in the United States are affected by recent declines in theatre attendance. No longer the only outlet for serious drama or entertaining comedies, theatrical productions must use ticket sales as

192-805: A degree and the want of patronage from Lord Pembroke may both be explained on the supposition that he had become 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 (registered with the Stationers Company , 7 December 1621) appeared as the work of Massinger and Thomas Dekker . During these years he worked in collaboration with other dramatists. A joint letter, from Nathan Field , Robert Daborne and Philip Massinger, to Philip Henslowe , begs for an immediate loan of five pounds to release them from their "unfortunate extremity",

256-507: A form of playwright. Outside of the Western world there is Indian classical drama , with one of the oldest known playwrights being Śudraka , whose attributed plays can be dated to the second century BC. The Nāṭya Shāstra , a text on the performing arts from between 500BC-500AD, categorizes playwrights as being among the members of a theatre company, although playwrights were generally the highest in social status, with some being kings. In

320-423: 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. Caution must be used in interpreting this play as an elucidation of Massinger's views; it is not entirely his work. In The Renegado , however, the action is dominated by the beneficent influence of a Jesuit priest, Francisco, and the doctrine of baptismal regeneration

384-615: A lost collaboration, with Fletcher and Field. The list given above represents a consensus of scholarship; individual critics have assigned various other plays, or portions of plays, to Massinger—like The Faithful Friends , or the first two acts of The Second Maiden's Tragedy (1611). Massinger's independent works were collected by Thomas 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 Lt. Col. Cunningham (1867), and selections by Arthur Symons in

448-853: A member of the Council of the Marches of Wales for 1633–?1646. Herbert died on 27 April 1673 and was buried at St Paul's, Covent Garden . Herbert was twice married. He married firstly, in July 1625, Susanna daughter of Richard Sleford, a London clothworker, and widow of Edward Plumer, merchant tailor of London. By her he had one son who died in his father's lifetime, and two daughters. Lady Susanna Herbert died in 1650. Herbert married secondly, in 1650/51, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Robert Offley of London and Oadby, Leicestershire. By her he had three sons (one of whom died in his father's lifetime) and five daughters. Lady Elizabeth Herbert survived him and died in 1698. Herbert

512-553: A pejorative sense by Ben Jonson to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson uses the word in his Epigram 49, which is thought to refer to John Marston or Thomas Dekker : Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and so were regarded as the province of poets. This view was held as late as the early 19th century. The term "playwright" later again lost this negative connotation. The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are

576-635: A playwright, winning awards for his play The Phoenix at both the New York International Fringe Festival in 1999 and the Route 66 American Playwriting Competition in 2000. Today, theatre companies have new play development programs meant to develop new American voices in playwriting. Many regional theatres have hired dramaturges and literary managers in an effort to showcase various festivals for new work, or bring in playwrights for residencies. Funding through national organizations, such as

640-635: A predicament similar to that of the head of the house he revered, the Earl of Pembroke—who found that he could not support King Charles in the English Civil War , and became one of the few noblemen to back the Parliamentary side. Massinger did not live long enough to have to take a position in that conflict. 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

704-400: A sacrament that would be surprising for a Catholic. As noted above, Massinger placed moral and religious concerns over political considerations, in ways that offended the interests of king and state in his generation. While not a "democrat" in any modern sense (no one in his society was), Massinger's political sympathies, insofar as we can determine them from his works, might have placed him in

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768-487: 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

832-525: A source of income, which has caused many of them to reduce the number of new works being produced. For example, Playwrights Horizons produced only six plays in the 2002–03 seasons, compared with thirty-one in 1973–74. Playwrights commonly encounter difficulties in getting their shows produced and often cannot earn a living through their plays alone, leading them to take up other jobs to supplement their incomes. Many playwrights are also film makers . For instance, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock began his career as

896-558: A stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, which was to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities , of action, place, and time. This meant that the playwright had to construct the play so that its "virtual" time would not exceed 24 hours, that it would be restricted to a single setting, and that there would be no subplots. Other terms, such as verisimilitude and decorum, circumscribed

960-615: Is Hans Sachs (1494–1576) who wrote 198 dramatic works. In England, The Second Shepherds' Play of the Wakefield Cycle is the best known early farce. However, farce did not appear independently in England until the 16th century with the work of John Heywood (1497–1580). Playwright William Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Most playwrights of

1024-438: Is an archaic English term for a craftsperson or builder (as in a wheelwright or cartwright ). The words combine to indicate a person who has "wrought" words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form—a play. (The homophone with "write" is coincidental.) The first recorded use of the term "playwright" is from 1605, 73 years before the first written record of the term "dramatist". It appears to have been first used in

1088-506: 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." Conversely, characters in Massinger's plays sometimes masquerade as Catholic clergy ( The Bashful Lover ) and even hear believers' confessions ( The Emperor of the East )—a violation of

1152-448: Is not necessary to suppose that Massinger, Fletcher, Ford, and Rowley-or-Webster sat down in a room together to write a play.) More than a dozen of Massinger's plays are said to be lost, though the titles of some of these may be duplicates of those of existing plays. Eleven of these lost plays were manuscripts used by John Warburton's cook for lighting fires and making pies. The tragedy The Jeweller of Amsterdam (c. 1616–19) may be

1216-633: Is now in the Beinecke Library . After his death, the Ord transcript was bought by J.O. Halliwell-Phillips , who also did not publish anything from it. The Ord transcript appeared to be lost until 1937, when R.C. Bald discovered fragments of it pasted into Halliwell-Phillips' notebooks, stored at the Folger Shakespeare Library . It was revealed that Halliwell-Philips had gone through the Ord transcript and cut out interesting items, apparently discarding

1280-553: Is reported to have himself struck out a passage put into the mouth of Don Pedro, king of Spain, as "too insolent." The poet seems to have adhered closely to the politics of his patron, Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke , who had leanings to democracy and was a personal enemy of the Duke of Buckingham. The servility towards the Crown displayed in Beaumont and Fletcher 's plays reflected the temper of

1344-534: Is still useful to playwrights today is the " French scene ", which is a scene in a play where the beginning and end are marked by a change in the makeup of the group of characters onstage rather than by the lights going up or down or the set being changed. Notable playwrights: Greek theater was alive and flourishing on the island of Crete. During the Cretan Renaissance two notable Greek playwrights Georgios Chortatzis and Vitsentzos Kornaros were present in

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1408-462: The Ancient Greeks . These early plays were for annual Athenian competitions among play writers held around the 5th century BC. Such notables as Aeschylus , Sophocles , Euripides , and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides . The origins of Athenian tragedy remain obscure, though by

1472-589: The Lady Elizabeth's Men , then playing at the Cockpit Theatre , 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 Queen Henrietta's Men , Massinger continued to write regularly for the King's Men until his death. The tone of the dedications of his later plays affords evidence of his continued poverty. In

1536-956: The Mermaid Series (1887–1889). Subsequent work on Massinger includes Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson, eds., The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger (5 vols., Oxford, 1976), Martin Garrett, ed., Massinger: the Critical Heritage (London, 1991), chapters in Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: the Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England (Madison, 1984) and Martin Butler, Theatre and Crisis 1632–1642 (Cambridge, 1984), and Martin Garrett, "Philip Massinger" in

1600-600: The National Endowment for the Arts and the Theatre Communications Group , encouraged the partnerships of professional theatre companies and emerging playwrights. Playwrights will often have a cold reading of a script in an informal sitdown setting, which allows them to evaluate their own plays and the actors performing them. Cold reading means that the actors haven't rehearsed the work, or may be seeing it for

1664-449: The 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics , in which he analyzed the principle of action or praxis as the basis for tragedy. He then considered elements of drama: plot ( μύθος mythos ), character ( ἔθος ethos ), thought ( dianoia ), diction ( lexis ), music ( melodia ), and spectacle ( opsis ). Since the myths on which Greek tragedy were based were widely known, plot had to do with

1728-536: The 5th century it was institutionalised in competitions ( agon ) held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysos (the god of wine and fertility ). As contestants in the City Dionysia's competition (the most prestigious of the festivals to stage drama), playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play. For

1792-702: The Borough of Bewdley lies) to his brothers in 1627 and they passed it to Herbert. He was the Member of Parliament for Montgomery Boroughs in 1626 and Bewdley in 1640 (in both the Short and the Long parliaments), but was disabled from sitting by resolution of the Commons in 1642 because he put into execution the king's commission of array . In 1646 at the end of the First Civil War he

1856-545: The Marches . William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke , who would come to oversee the London Stage and the royal company as King James's Lord Chamberlain, succeeded to the title in 1601. It has been suggested that he supported Massinger at Oxford, but the omission of any reference to him in any of Massinger's prefaces points to the contrary. Massinger left Oxford without a degree in 1606. His father had died in 1603, and that may have left him without financial assistance. The lack of

1920-550: The Middle Ages, the earliest of which is The Play of the Greenwood by Adam de la Halle in 1276. It contains satirical scenes and folk material such as faeries and other supernatural occurrences. Farces also rose dramatically in popularity after the 13th century. The majority of these plays come from France and Germany and are similar in tone and form, emphasizing sex and bodily excretions. The best known playwright of farces

1984-605: The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson. This period saw the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn . As a reaction to the decadence of Charles II era productions, sentimental comedy grew in popularity. Playwrights like Colley Cibber and Richard Steele believed that humans were inherently good but capable of being led astray. The Italian Renaissance brought about

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2048-516: The Revels) Sir Henry Herbert (baptized 7 July 1594 – 27 April 1673) was Master of the Revels to both King Charles I and King Charles II , as well as a politician during both reigns. Baptised in July 1594, Herbert was the sixth son of Magdelen Herbert and Richard Herbert of Montgomery Castle . Richard was a younger brother of Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury and

2112-485: The Revels, in particular his licensing of plays for performance and his organization of court performances. His detailed records provide modern scholars with dates for many plays of the period, as well as dates of performances at court, and evidence for the existence of lost plays. The office-book itself has been lost since 1818, but its information partially survives in incomplete eighteenth- and nineteenth-century transcripts. When Herbert died in 1673, his papers, including

2176-420: The ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis , "the act of making". This is the source of the English word poet . Despite Chinese Theatre having performers dated back to the 6th century BC with You Meng , their perspective of theatre was such that plays had no other role than "performer" or "actor", but given that the performers were also the ones who invented their performances, they could be considered

2240-404: The arrangement and selection of existing material. Character was determined by choice and by action. Tragedy is mimesis —"the imitation of an action that is serious". He developed his notion of hamartia , or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist , which provides the basis for the "conflict-driven" play. There were also a number of secular performances staged in

2304-432: The choir stalls. Next to these is a plaque commemorating Edmund Shakespeare (William's younger brother) who is buried in the cathedral, although the exact location of his grave is unknown. 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 Virgin Martyr , in which Dekker probably had

2368-456: 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 V, Scene 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 18 March 1640. In the entry in

2432-966: The famous line, "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal...." In 2021, Making Massinger , a play by Simon Butteriss, was recorded and streamed by Wiltshire Creative, who commissioned it. The play is in verse and described as a revenge tragicomedy. The cast includes Samuel Barnett, Edward Bennett, Hubert Burton, Julia Hills, Jane How and Nina Wadia. The following scheme is based on the work of Cyrus Hoy , Ian Fletcher, and Terence P. Logan. (See References.) With John Fletcher : With John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont : With John Fletcher and Nathan Field : With Nathan Field: With John Fletcher, John Ford , and William Rowley (?), or John Webster (?): With John Fletcher, Ben Jonson , and George Chapman (?): With Thomas Dekker : With Thomas Middleton and William Rowley : Some of these "collaborations" are in fact more complex: revisions by Massinger of older plays by Fletcher and others, etc. (It

2496-477: The first time, and usually, the technical requirements are minimal. The O'Neill Festival offers summer retreats for young playwrights to develop their work with directors and actors. Playwriting collectives like 13P and Orbiter 3 gather members together to produce, rather than develop, new works. The idea of the playwriting collective is in response to plays being stuck in the development process and never advancing to production. Henry Herbert (Master of

2560-456: The jewels of Anne of Denmark . Herbert's role as Master of the Revels involved reading and licensing plays and supervising all kinds of public entertainment. Officially, Herbert became Master of the Revels in 1641 but he had been doing the work of the office even earlier. Sir John Astley , the official Master from 1622 to his death in January 1640, had appointed Herbert his deputy the year that he

2624-486: The latter part of the 16th century. The plays of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Friedrich Schiller , and other Sturm und Drang playwrights inspired a growing faith in feeling and instinct as guides to moral behavior and were part of the German romanticism movement. Aleksandr Ostrovsky was Russia's first professional playwright). Author and playwright Agatha Christie wrote The Moustrap ,

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2688-403: The money to be taken from the balance due for the "play of Mr. Fletcher's and ours." A second document shows that Massinger and Daborne owed Henslowe £3 on 4 July 1615. The earlier note probably dates from 1613, and from this time Massinger apparently worked regularly with John Fletcher . Sir Aston Cockayne , Massinger's constant friend and patron, refers in explicit terms to this collaboration in

2752-449: 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 . Herbert recommended Arthur in 1587 for the office of examiner in the Court of

2816-562: The office throughout the time it was dormant, down to the re-opening of the theatres at the Restoration in 1660. When Charles II allowed Thomas Killigrew and Sir William Davenant to form two theatre companies under royal patronage, the King's Company and the Duke's Company , in August 1660, Herbert complained bitterly at what he perceived as the violation of his rights, and started court actions; he

2880-468: The office-book to Reverend Richard Warner and his sister Rebecca Warner , and they published some extracts from it. When Craven Ord died, his transcripts of the office-book were auctioned and ultimately ended up in the hands of Jacob Henry Burn, who was compiling notes toward a history of the Office of the Revels. Burn copied, or sometimes cut out and pasted, some of Ord's records into his own notebook, which

2944-480: The office-book, but he only published a fraction of it, and his transcript has never been found. At some point, the scholar Craven Ord studied the office-book and transcribed a large number of entries from it but did not publish them. In the 1790s, George Chalmers published some extracts not published by Malone in 1799; however, although he did not acknowledge it, these may have been supplied to Chalmers by Ord. At some point before 1818, Thomas Ingram temporarily loaned

3008-491: The office-book, were stored at his home, the manor-house of Ribbesford , Worcestershire . In 1738, Herbert's grandson, Henry Herbert, 2nd Baron Herbert of Chirbury died childless and the archive was bequeathed to another relative, Francis Walker, and was gradually dispersed over time. However, the office-book and other documents related to it were overlooked, remaining at Ribbesford in an old wooden chest where they were partially damaged by water leakage. In 1787, Ribbesford House

3072-489: 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 Massinger's own judgment The Roman Actor

3136-456: The parish register he is described as a "stranger", which, however, implies nothing more than that he belonged to another parish. He is buried in the same tomb as Fletcher. That grave can be seen to this day in the chancel of what is now Southwark Cathedral near London Bridge on the south bank of the Thames. There the names of Fletcher and Massinger appear on adjacent plaques laid in the floor between

3200-407: The period typically collaborated with others at some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, mostly early and late in his career. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. In England, after the interregnum , and Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there was a move toward neoclassical dramaturgy. Between

3264-619: The poet George Herbert , both former members of the Parliament of England , and older brother of naval officer Thomas Herbert . Their family was related to the Herbert Earls of Pembroke , prominent figures in English government and society throughout the Jacobean and Caroline era . Edward Herbert was ambassador in Paris, and Henry joined him in 1619 and became involved in the case of Piero Hugon and

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3328-426: The preface to The Maid of Honour (1632) he wrote, addressing Sir Francis Foljambe and Sir Thomas Bland: "I had not to this time subsisted, but that I was supported by your frequent courtesies and favours." The prologue to The Guardian (licensed 1633) refers to two unsuccessful plays and two years of silence, when the author feared he had lost the popular favour. It is probable that this break in his production

3392-535: The prologue, Massinger ironically apologises for his ignorance of history, and professes that his accuracy is at fault if his picture comes near "a late and sad example." The obvious "late and sad example" of a wandering prince could be no other than Charles I 's brother-in-law, the Elector Palatine. An allusion to the same subject may be traced in The Maid of Honour . In another play by Massinger, not extant, Charles I

3456-409: The rest. In 1996, N.W. Bawcutt discovered a few more of Hallilwell-Phillips' cuttings in a notebook at Edinburgh University Library . After 1818, the original office-book appears to have been lost. It was in the possession of Reverend Edward Winnington-Ingram, but it is not known what he did with it and it is no longer in the family's papers. Halliwell-Phillips asserted that it was in the library of

3520-506: The revised Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2005). Dramatist The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks . William Shakespeare is amongst the most famous playwrights in literature, both in England and across the world. The word "play" is from Middle English pleye , from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word wright

3584-553: The subject matter significantly. For example, verisimilitude limits of the unities. Decorum fitted proper protocols for behavior and language on stage. In France, contained too many events and actions, thus, violating the 24-hour restriction of the unity of time. Neoclassicism never had as much traction in England, and Shakespeare 's plays are directly opposed to these models, while in Italy, improvised and bawdy commedia dell'arte and opera were more popular forms. One structural unit that

3648-410: 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 . For an examination of William Shakespeare's influence on Massinger, see T. S. Eliot 's essay on Massinger. It includes

3712-573: Was considered a Royalist delinquent by the Parliamentarians and his estate was compounded . After the Restoration in 1660, Herbert again sat for Bewdley (in the Cavalier Parliament ) and held the seat until his death. He was a Justice of the Peace for Worcestershire by 1636 to 1646 and from July 1660 to his death. He was appointed High Sheriff of Worcestershire for 1648–1649 and was also

3776-635: Was created Earl of Powis . This nobleman was a great-grandson of the 2nd Lord Herbert of Cherbury of the first creation, and since his time the barony has been held by the Earls of Powis. However the Ribbesford estate passed to his cousin Charles Morley, who took the surname Herbert. The surviving transcripts of Herbert's "office-book" are among the most important documentary records of English Renaissance drama . Herbert recorded all of his activities as Master of

3840-420: Was especially irate with Davenant, who had carried on clandestine theatrical performances in the 1656–1660 period, without Herbert benefitting. Over the next two years, Herbert's claims were adjusted and the two royal companies had their privileges renewed by royal patent in 1662. Afterward, he was no longer the power in the theatre that he had been before. Charles I gave the manor of Ribbesford (in whose parish

3904-444: Was knighted in 1623. For this arrangement Herbert paid Astley £150 per year in return for the income that the office provided. Since Herbert was responsible for licensing and also censoring plays, he had a powerful influence on English drama for two decades, 1623–1642. Herbert had barely gained the official position of Master in 1641 when the theatres were closed at the start of the English Civil War in August 1642. Herbert retained

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3968-542: Was owing to his free handling of political matters. 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, Antiochus being substituted for Sebastian, and Rome for Spain. In

4032-405: Was sold to Francis Ingram who discovered the chest and its contents. In the next few decades, Ingram and his descendants permitted scholars to study the revels documents. The most important was Edmond Malone , who found the office-book to be partially moldered, but still readable. He published selections from it in his edition of Shakespeare (1790). Malone claimed to have made a full transcript of

4096-498: Was succeeded by Henry , his son from his second marriage, for whom the barony of Cherbury was revived. Both he and his son served as Members of Parliament for Bewdley. Henry died in January 1709, and his son, another Henry , became 2nd Lord Herbert of Cherbury of the second creation. He died without issue in April 1738, and again the barony became extinct. In 1743 it was revived for Henry Arthur Herbert (c. 1703–1772), who five years later

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