Philip Massinger

Philip Massinger (1583-1640) was the son of an MP who was steward to the Earl of Pembroke. He was born at or near the Pembroke seat at Wilton near Salisbury, and educated at Oxford until 1606. It is not known when he began to write but in 1620 John Taylor noted him as a well-known playwright. He wrote with various playwrights, but he collaborated mainly with John Fletcher after Francis Beaumont ceased to write. After Fletcher’s death Massinger carried on as chief writer for the King’s Men, until his death in 1640 in Bankside. He is reputed to have been buried in the same grave is Fletcher.

He was not a stranger to hard times. In 1613 he wrote a joint letter, with Nathaniel Field, & Robert Daborne to Philip Henslowe, begging for an immediate loan of five pounds to release them from their “unfortunate extremitie”, the money to be taken from the balance due for the “play of Mr Fletcher’s and ours”, but 1615 he still owed money to Henslowe. He seemed to have received patronage from the sister of the Earl of Huntingdon, and the Herbert family, including the Earl of Pembroke, who paid a pension to his widow living in Wales after his death.

Massinger prepared a prompt script of the play which survives in a manuscript in the Folger Library.

Some critics have suggested that Massinger occasionally introduced political themes into his plays. The Beggars Bush followed shortly after Fletcher and Massinger’s overtly political, and troublesome, play John Olden Barneveldt. This was also set in the Low Countries, and based on contemporary events and accounts of those published in England and the Low Countries. For more on the connections between The Beggars Bush the political, religious and trade tensions between England and the Dutch State and aristocratic beggars who lived there.

The Beggars Bush play also has possible connections not only with the Low Countries but also with Spanish literature. It is possible that the themes of nobles disguised as gypsies/beggars and of an apparent beggar’s qualities being revealed to result from noble birth originate from a story La Gitarilla (The Little Gypsy Girl) by Miguel de Cervantes.

Spain was intimately connected with political and cultural life in England. The possibility of a Spanish marriage was a constant in foreign policy for decades. The Spanish Ambassador, Godamar, was well known in the intellectual life in London and attended the theatre. Although the story was not published in England until 1992 it may have been available to Fletcher and Massinger. Fletcher’s associate Beaumont was known to Sheldon, the translator of Don Quixote, and Beaumont may have seen this manuscript. A manuscript version of another Spanish work by James Mabbe has been tentatively dated to 1598, though not published until 1640. It must be remembered that not only did playwrights collaborate in writing but they must also have done so in seeking plots and themes. It is known that Nicholas Blount, the publisher, and Thomas Middleton, the playwright, both read Spanish, and it has been suggested that Fletcher could also. Fletcher used themes from Cervantes in The Double Marriage (1617) and before that in with Shakespeare Cardenio (1613).

Posted: May 15th, 2011 | Filed under: The Play | Tags: John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, The Play | No Comments »