A New Way to Pay Old Debts

by Philip Massinger, T.W. Cruik (Editor)

Overview

New Mermaids are modern spelling, fully-annotated editions of important English plays. Each volume includes a critical introduction, biography of the author, discussions of dates and sources, textual details, a bibliography and information about the staging of the play.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408144527
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	06/13/2014
Series:	New Mermaids
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Philip Massinger was a Renaissance playwright whose works are remembered for their social and political satire. Born in 1583, it is estimated that he either wrote or collaborated on some 53 plays by the time of his death in 1640. Massinger's works include the romances The Duke of Milan (1620), The Great Duke of Florence (1627), and The Roman Actor (1626), the comedies The City Madam (1632) and The Guardian (1633), and the tragicomedies The Bondman (1623) and The Renegado (1624). He also collaborated on 11 plays with John Fletcher, and may possibly have had a hand in Shakespeare and Fletcher's Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Philip Massinger was born in Salisbury in 1583, the son of a Wiltshire family (the surname is often spelled Messenger). His father was employed in the household of Henry Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, at Wilton, his office being that of house-steward and agent to the Earl. Massinger was educated probably first at Salisbury grammar school, and afterwards at Oxford, which he left without a degree for reasons unknown. By 1613 he was writing plays for the theatre-manager Henslowe, to whom he applied for money when imprisoned with two fellow-dramatists Daborne and Field for debt. It is estimated that in some thirty years Massinger either wrote or had a hand in some 53 plays. His earliest collaborations and original plays were written for the King's Men, the company of which Shakespeare had been a member and a writer, playing at the Globe and Blackfriars theatres. John Fletcher had succeeded Shakespeare as the King's Men's principal dramatist, and it was Fletcher with whom Massinger chiefly collaborated, Fletcher from whom he learnt much of his dramatic art, and Fletcher whom he succeeded in 1626 (after a short period of writing for the Queen's Men, playing at the Cockpit, or, as it was called when rebuilt after a fire, the Phoenix). He died in 1640 and was buried in Fletcher's grave in Southwark Cathedral. Massinger's works include the romances The Duke of Milan (1620), The Great Duke of Florence (1627), and The Roman Actor (1626), the comedies The City Madam (1632) and The Guardian (1633), and the tragicomedies The Bondman (1623) and The Renegado (1624). He also collaborated on 11 plays with John Fletcher, and may possibly have had a hand in Shakespeare and Fletcher's Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen.