Background
Philip Massinger was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, United Kingdom in 1583. 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.
( New RSC Classics series highlights rarely performed Tud...)
New RSC Classics series highlights rarely performed Tudor and Jacobean plays.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1854596977/?tag=2022091-20
(New Mermaids are modern spelling, fully-annotated edition...)
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.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KJDZIV4/?tag=2022091-20
( The Renegado is one of the most shamelessly entertainin...)
The Renegado is one of the most shamelessly entertaining plays of its age, fetching its inspiration from a number of works by Cervantes, based on his own experiences as a captive in Algiers. Introducing the eroticized captivity narrative to the English stage, Massinger's tragicomedy combines it with the long-popular romance motif of a Christian hero's conquest of an exotic princess. But even as it indulges in romantic fantasy, The Renegado engages with contentious issues of national and international politics, offering a provocative response to the sectarian feuds dividing England in the 1620s, while exploiting wider European fears of the expansionist Muslim empire of the Ottomans. Through its treatment of religious confrontation and conversion, Massinger's play offers important insights into early modern constructions of the Islamic world, and emerges as a piece with unexpected resonances for our own time. This is the first major single-volume edition of The Renegado, making it properly available to all students and teachers of early modern drama. With detailed on-page commentary notes and an illustrated introduction assessing its impact on the Renaissance stage as well as its particular relevance to our contemporary multi-cultural society, it is a stimulating and original teaching edition. An extract from Cervantes' The Prisons of Algiers, a key source for the play, is given in an appendix and the whole Cervantes text is available on the Arden website as an additional resource.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1904271618/?tag=2022091-20
Philip Massinger was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, United Kingdom in 1583. 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.
Philip Massinger left Oxford without a degree in 1606.
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.
Philip Massinger's name first appears on a title (along with that of Thomas Dekker) in The Virgin Martyr in 1622.
Little more is known of his life, apart from what he says in dedication to patrons, in several mendicant poems surviving in manuscript, and from mentions in the verses of Sir Aston Cokaine. He was one of the principal dramatists in the decade following John Fletcher's death.
During his lifetime he was concerned with over 50 plays, including many collaborations with, or revisions of, Fletcher; there are 15 surviving plays by him alone, one (Believe As You List) in his own manuscript.
His well-known A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1633) is still sometimes performed.
Internal evidence, notably in The City Madam (1658), The Maid of Honour (1632), and The Renegado (1630), suggests a strong sympathy with Roman Catholicism.
However, his two best plays, The City Madam and A New Way to Pay Old Debts, are atypical in that they follow Ben Jonson.
Thus his plays may be analyzed as theses.
His characters, who never develop, are the stock of romantic tragicomedy, though they include some strong women and the noteworthy Sir Giles Overreach.
Massinger's verse is oratorical rather than poetic, couched in an involved periodic syntax which makes his hand easy to distinguish.
He is given to "set" speeches in scenes of legal argument and persuasion, and, while somewhat pedestrian, he can occasionally soar on such themes as patriotism and liberty.
Echoes of Shakespeare abound. Massinger's most typical plays are perhaps The Duke of Milan (1623), The Great Duke of Florence (1636), The Maid of Honour, The Bondman (1624), and The Renegado; his excellent collaboration with Field, The Fatal Dowry (1632), was adapted by Nicholas Rowe in 1703 as The Fair Penitent.
Philip Massinger is especially noted for his plays, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The City Madam and The Roman Actor.
( The Renegado is one of the most shamelessly entertainin...)
(New Mermaids are modern spelling, fully-annotated edition...)
( New RSC Classics series highlights rarely performed Tud...)
Philip Massinger seems to have adhered closely to the politics of his patron, Philip Herbert, earl of Montgomery, and afterwards 4th earl of Pembroke, who had leanings to democracy and was a personal enemy of the duke of Buckingham.
Philip Massinger's father had died in 1603, and he was perhaps dependent on his own exertions.
