CHAPTER V.

PATRONAGE OF THE DRAMA BY CHARLES AND THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM--MASSINGER--BEN JONSON--THEIR CONNECTION WITH THE COURT, AND WITH THE DUKE.

CHAPTER V.

After considering the benefits conferred by Charles I. and his favourite on art, and detailing their patronage of eminent masters, one turns, naturally, to the literature of the day, and more especially--as subsidiary to music and painting--to the drama.

The accession of James I. opened fairer prospects to dramatists than they had enjoyed in the days of Elizabeth, who paid as grudgingly for her amusements as for the services of her statesmen. To her “Master of the bears and dogs” she assigned a salary of a farthing a day only.[177]Yet the office was sometimes held by a Knight; and, during the “princely pleasures of Kenilworth,” of which bear-baiting formed a prominent feature, by no less opulent a personthan Edward Alleyn, the actor, and founder of Dulwich College. Little but honour, therefore, had accrued, in the time of Elizabeth, to poets and play-writers; and the struggling authors were obliged to have recourse to a more liberal patronage than that of the Court--until James I., somewhat “of a poet, but more of a scholar,” promoted, with an extravagant zeal, the diversions which his taste disposed him to enjoy. Plays, which his predecessor had deemed likely to draw her younger subjects from the manlier recreations of bear-baiting and hunting, were patronized in high quarters, and were henceforth the fashionable diversions notwithstanding the invectives of the Puritans, both of the Court, and in the provincial castles of the nobility at a distance from London.

Independently of the delights of the masque, which comprised both music, dancing, and poetry, there were pleasures to be found in the drama which accorded with the tendencies and failings of that period.

It was an age of personality, a disposition to which existed as strongly in the unrefined court of James, and even among his northern retainers, as in the brilliant galleries of Versailles, encouraged by Louis XIV., and led by the dangerous and witty St. Simon. “The great eye of the world,” says an able writer, “was not then,any more than now, so intent on things and principles as not to have a corner for the infirmities of individuals.”[178]Wilson, Weldon, Winwood, Osborne, Peyton, Sanderson, circulated what were in many instances fabrications about the higher classes; whilst the crimes and absurdities of the lower orders were celebrated by the ballad-mongers, or dramatized for the stage. Many of those ballads transmitted to us, which were exempted from the fate of “damn’d ditties,” were founded on authentic domestic tragedies, the actors in which have long since passed into oblivion. The ballad, which afforded the multitude a pleasing insight into the fact that their superiors were no better than themselves, was the most popular literature of the day. Sung to doleful tunes, with a nasal twang, they called forth the satire of the dramatist, who aimed at a higher species of personality, and who deprecated these, often scurrilous, productions; which were, at length, checked in the time of Swift by the imposition of a penny stamp on every loose sheet. The ballad was a source of dread to the tavern bully, whose iniquities it exposed.

“If I have not ballads made of you all, and sung to filthy tunes, may this cup of sack be my poison,” says Falstaff.

“Now shall have we damnable ballads out against us,Most wicked madrigals.”Humorous Lieutenant.

“Now shall have we damnable ballads out against us,

Most wicked madrigals.”

Humorous Lieutenant.

Whilst the attention of society was not altogether fixed on exalted members only, it was found difficult to restrain satire, and even calumny, from introducing living characters on the stage, and from depicting them with hateful qualities, and in invidious situations.

In vain did the Master of the Revels, who was under the peculiar influence of the Court, endeavour to control the disposition to personality which characterized even many of the plays acted before James I. and his son. In these compositions the public acquired that insight into conduct and peculiarities which is now derived from periodical papers, or from diaries, letters, and autobiographies, in which our age is especially fertile.

Amongst the dramatists of James and Charles’s reigns, we may take, as the most remarkable, Philip Massinger, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and John Ford, the greater part of whose works were produced during the life of King James and of Charles I. and II.

The biography of each of these celebrated men elucidates much of the manners and temper of the times, and their history comprises that of thisspecies of literature during the commencement and middle of the seventeenth century.

Philip Massinger was the son of Arthur Massinger, a retainer in the household of the Earl of Pembroke. A retainer was often a gentleman of good birth but small means, and this was probably the condition of Arthur Massinger, who, from his carrying letters from his master, the Earl, to Queen Elizabeth, could not have been a man of low origin, else he would not have been admitted to the honour of conveying any dispatch to one who placed so much importance on lineage in those who entered her presence. That custom was still in force, which surrounded a nobleman, not with menials, but with a middle-class of bondmen, who thought service no degradation. It was esteemed a turn of fortune when a youth of gentle birth could be introduced into some noble house, to learn therein politeness, chivalrous attention to ladies, and to imbibe, from example and precept, that loyalty which was then considered a sort of virtue. The education and training of a page is now confined to royal courts; but there were, in England, in those days of the Tudors and Stuarts, many minor courts, which exacted, in miniature, the duties and service that existed in the palaces of the monarch. And of those stately andwealthy patrons, none were more respected than the Herberts, Earls of Pembroke, to whom Arthur Massinger wrote himself “Bondman.”

That wholesome discipline which it is difficult in our own time for a parent to preserve over his family was maintained to the advantage of a page who rose from a lowly to a confidential situation. Massinger’s lines in the “New Way to Pay Old Debts” refer to the subjection under which the youth groaned, but to which the matured actors on this world’s stage looked back with gratitude:--

“Art thou scarce manumised from the porter’s lodge,And now sworn servant to the pantofle,And darest thou dream of marriage?”New Way to Pay Old Debts.

“Art thou scarce manumised from the porter’s lodge,

And now sworn servant to the pantofle,

And darest thou dream of marriage?”

New Way to Pay Old Debts.

Yet in this servitude the father of Philip Massinger lived and died. These grand establishments, in which the noble head saw around him none but persons of gentle blood and breeding, would long since have ceased to be congenial, even if they still existed, to the English notions of independence, by which servitude is confounded with slavery. But they had this advantage--the son of a retainer was supposed to have a claim on the illustrious noble, who estimated his father’s fidelity and offices; and that this was the case with Philip Massinger, might seem probable from the advantagesof education which he was enabled to derive; and the value of which he had learned to appreciate, in the proximity to the really noble and intellectual family of Herbert. It appears from Philip Massinger’s dedication of the “Bondman,” that he never had any personal communication with Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery; but that is no proof that he may not have been indebted for the advantage of a university education to the far more intellectual and estimable Henry, Earl of Pembroke, his father’s patron, as appears from the following passage in the dedication of the “Bondman” to the Earl of Montgomery:--

“However, I could never arrive at the happiness to be made known to your lordship; yet a desire born with me, to make a tender of all duties and service to the noble family of the Herberts, descended to me as an inheritance from my dead father, Arthur Massinger. Many years he happily spent in the service of your honourable house, and died a servant in it, leaving his to be ever most glad and ready to be at the command of all such as derive themselves from his most honoured master, your lordship’s most honoured father.”[179]

It would be agreeable to reflect that Massingerhad passed his childhood and youth, partly at all events, in the classical region of Wilton Castle, which Sir Philip Sidney had almost sanctified to the Muses by his presence, and whence he had issued forth on that expedition in which he died a hero’s death. But those were not the days in which the childhood and youth of celebrated men were recorded, and of Massinger’s not a trace remained. We only guess at the early influences which formed his imaginative, yet vigorous mind. We only conjecture that his taste was directed to poetry by the taste of those whom he must have learned first to respect. We are not sure, yet we are glad to believe, that whilst his mind took on afterwards the impressions of the age in which he lived, it was in earliest youth incited by the author of the “Arcadia,” and by the acquirements of her to whom that poem was dedicated, to culture and exercise, until circumstances brought its powers into full activity.

The dedication of the “Bondman” was written in 1624; and whilst it shews that the poet had never seen Philip, Earl of Montgomery, it does not follow, as has been stated, that he wasnotreared at Wilton during the life-time of Henry, Earl of Pembroke, the “noble father” of Philip, who, as a younger son, was created Earl of Montgomery,and long known by that title only. Henry, who was succeeded by his eldest son, the second Earl of Pembroke, died in 1600; and since Massinger was born in 1584, it is extremely probable that he passed his childhood at Wilton, although, in compliance with the custom of the age, he was probably sent out to nurse. Even the name of his mother is unknown. Few authors of so much merit as Massinger have been, as Hartley Coleridge observes, “so little noticed by contemporaries;” and none so soon forgotten by succeeding times.

There can, however, be but little doubt that Philip Massinger imbibed at Wilton that value for letters which is so soon caught by children from the society of the intellectual; and that a gentler influence than that of Earl Henry stimulated the natural inclinations of his mind. A learned education for women of rank was in vogue for nearly a century after the Reformation: with Protestantism came in the notion that the female understanding was worthy of high cultivation; and our earliest and most superior women, in those times, were prepared for their important part in life by a sound and almost masculine training. Witness the learning of Lady Jane Grey, of Queen Elizabeth, of Joanna, Lady Abergavenny, whom Walpole believes to have been the “foundress of that noble school offemale learning, of which (with herself) there were,” he says, “no less than four authoresses in the three descents.”[180]Among the learned and the virtuous none was more esteemed in her time than Mary, the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, and the third wife of Henry, Earl of Pembroke, the son of Arthur Massinger’s patron. She was one of those ornaments of her age who added lustre to her station without forfeiting one feminine attribute. What was then called a “polite education” comprised not only the acquisition of light literature, but that also of classical learning. From her mother, Lady Mary Dudley, this admirable woman inherited a noble and congenial spirit; from her father, Sir Henry Sidney, surpassing abilities, moral excellencies, enlarged views, generous motives. That father, superior to the venal courtiers of his time, spent his whole fortune in his endeavours to benefit Ireland and Wales, of the affairs of which he held the administration. In her brother, Sir Philip Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke found a companion in all her pursuits, as well as in affection. Hence, as Spenser wrote, their minds grew in unison:--

“The gentlest shepherdess that liv’d that day,And most resembling, both in shape and spirit,Her brother dear.”

“The gentlest shepherdess that liv’d that day,

And most resembling, both in shape and spirit,

Her brother dear.”

In conjunction with him, this gifted woman is said to have translated the Psalms;[181]of which effort Daniel says:--

“Those hymns which thou dost consecrate to Heaven,Which Israel’s singer to his God did frame,Unto thy voyage eternity hath given,And makes thee dear to Him from whence they came.”

“Those hymns which thou dost consecrate to Heaven,

Which Israel’s singer to his God did frame,

Unto thy voyage eternity hath given,

And makes thee dear to Him from whence they came.”

Several of these are extant; one of them was published in theGuardian;[182]and it corresponds with a Psalm printed in the “Nugæ Antiquæ” as the Countess of Pembroke’s.[183]It has been regretted that these productions are not authorized to be sung in churches; for the present version, Mr. Hartley Coleridge remarks, “is a disgrace and a mischief to the establishment.” These translations are preserved in the library at Wilton.

The Countess was residing there when the “Discourse of Life and Death,” by Mornay, which she translated from the French, was printed. This was in 1590, when Philip Massinger was six years of age. She survived until 1621; and, since she extended her patronage both to arts and letters, it is probable that she not only befriended Ben Jonson, but that she encouragedand assisted the struggling dramatist, whose father had been so favoured or retained in her husband’s house. Ben Jonson’s well-known lines on her tomb have challenged various criticisms. Whilst by some they are deemed a tribute “which have never been exceeded in the records of monumental praise,”[184]by another critic they are considered “too hyperbolical, too clever, and too conceited to be inscribed on a Christian’s tomb.”[185]

“Underneath this marble hearseLies the subject of all verse--Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother;Death, ere thou canst find another,Learned, and fair, and good as she,Time shall throw a dart at thee.”

“Underneath this marble hearse

Lies the subject of all verse--

Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother;

Death, ere thou canst find another,

Learned, and fair, and good as she,

Time shall throw a dart at thee.”

At all events, Massinger imbibed from his father’s connection with the Herbert family, one taste--that for theatricals. Amongst the retinue of the great peer, was a company of itinerant performers, “the Earl of Pembroke’s players;” and though the childhood of Massinger is indeed a blank, it maybe inferred that the attractions of the theatre, or rather of the hall, in which that portion of the Earl’s household must have been frequently occupied, were such as to fascinate a boy of an imaginative turn of mind. He is stated to havebeen shy, melancholy, retiring, and studious; that he received a classical education, as a boy, is also stated; but when that education was received, who directed that thoughtful and dreamy mind to poetry, or how he, who was evidently designed for a scholastic career, should have devoted himself to the profession of a play-writer, does not appear to have been ascertained, even by the indefatigable Gilford.

But it was an age of great mental energy, and there was sufficient in the rich harvest won by Shakspeare, or in the rare delights afforded by his works, to account for the direction of young Massinger’s genius.

It has been conjectured, also, that he acted occasionally in those plays the parts of which were then usually sustained by boys: of this there remains not a single proof, and nothing iscertain, in so far as the events of his youth are concerned, except that he was entered at St. Alban’s Hall, Oxford, in 1601-2.

It must not be supposed that this fact at all implied what in the present day it might appear to indicate. It did not follow that Massinger was to enter one of the learned professions, because he became a commoner in that small, ancient society of St. Alban’s Hall; nor was it a proof that the young man had parents who were inaffluent circumstances, as a University career now seems to imply. Oxford was then a place for cheap education, and many of the “poor scholars” at the various colleges underwent, as Strype shews us, great hardships. On the other hand, it was not uncommon for the profession of letters to be in those days a man’s only calling; and an academical training was his best commencement in that arduous course, since a certain display of erudition was undoubtedly one of the characteristics of the period.

The exhibition to college was, according to Anthony Wood, given to Massinger by the Earl of Pembroke; but others allege that Massinger derived the means of subsistence at Oxford from his father.

In those schools, where a man for the first, and perhaps for the only, time in his existence, frames his own success, independently of the patronage of others--in those schools, famed for strict impartiality, and where the battle is really to the strong--Massinger, nevertheless, did not appear. He left Oxford without taking his degree; for he had made the mistake, fatal to a poor man, who has to rest upon the endowments of that grand old university for his support, of not adopting the studies which the university prescribes to the exclusion of others. It was, indeed,a sin in the eyes of that zealous antiquary, whose tomb, in a corner of the anti-chapel of Merton College, is so often overlooked, save by those who honour his labours, and who view his merits, thus enshrined, with regretful reverence--that he gave his mind, as Anthony Wood tells us, “more to poetry or romance, for about four years or more, than to logic and philosophy, which he ought to have done, as he was patronizedto that end.”

He adds, without further comment than this, “that, being sufficiently famed for several specimens of wit, he betook himself to writing plays.” Massinger left Oxford in 1606--he was then twenty-two years of age.

For some time his history is again a blank, and his exertions and struggles, whatever they may have been, fell upon a serious, religious, thoughtful temperament, devoid of the elasticity with which Shakespeare fought and conquered the trials of fate. Play-writing was, at that time, almost the only means by which ready money could be obtained, and had the patronage of the Court in full activity, when Massinger cast himself into his future and only career. James I., soon after his accession, licensed the company of players who had hitherto been styled the “Lord Chamberlain’s,” but who were henceforth to becalled "the King’s servants"--amongst whom were Shakspeare, Burbage, Heminge, and others. Queen Anne adopted the “Earl of Worcester’s company,” and Prince Henry that of the Earl of Nottingham, the hero of the “Armada.” The Court, and even provincial nobles and gentry, although Protestantized, kept, with as scrupulous attention as ever, the great feasts of the Church; and on these, as in former times a mystery or morality was given, so now a play was often performed. “The stage,” says Hartley Coleridge, “was evoking and realizing the finest imaginations of the strongest intellects.”

Whether Massinger ever acted or not, is as doubtful as every other incident of his early life. It was not until 1614 that a glimmering of his actual condition in life is seen through the darkness, and the disclosure is melancholy and discouraging. There is something touching, as well as dreary, in the gloom that one can only diversify with scenes of penury and imprisonment for debt. At last the light breaks out; and, in the words of the following appeal, the history of some years of disappointment is disclosed:--[186]

"To our most loving friend, Mr. Philip Hinchlow, Esquire, these,--“Mr. Hinchlow--You understand our unfortunate extremitye, and I doe not thinke you so void of cristianitee but that you would throw so much money into the Thames as wee request now of you, rather than endanger so many innocent lives. You know there is Xl.more at least to be receaved of you for the play. We desire you to lend us Vl.of that; which shall be allowed to you, without which we cannot be bayled nor I play any more till this be dispatch’d. It will lose you XXl.ere the end of the next weeke, besides the hindrance of the next new play. Pray, sir, consider our cases with humanity, and now give us cause to acknowledge you our true friend in time of neede. Wee have entreated Mr. Davison to deliver this note, as well as witness your love as our promises and always acknowledgement to be ever your most thankful and loving friends,[187]”Philip Massinger.“R. Davison.”Nat. Field."

"To our most loving friend, Mr. Philip Hinchlow, Esquire, these,--

“Mr. Hinchlow--You understand our unfortunate extremitye, and I doe not thinke you so void of cristianitee but that you would throw so much money into the Thames as wee request now of you, rather than endanger so many innocent lives. You know there is Xl.more at least to be receaved of you for the play. We desire you to lend us Vl.of that; which shall be allowed to you, without which we cannot be bayled nor I play any more till this be dispatch’d. It will lose you XXl.ere the end of the next weeke, besides the hindrance of the next new play. Pray, sir, consider our cases with humanity, and now give us cause to acknowledge you our true friend in time of neede. Wee have entreated Mr. Davison to deliver this note, as well as witness your love as our promises and always acknowledgement to be ever your most thankful and loving friends,[187]

”Philip Massinger.“R. Davison.”Nat. Field."

”Philip Massinger.

“R. Davison.

”Nat. Field."

This letter is the only one with the signature of Philip Massinger extant. It was addressed to a pawnbroker--such was Philip Hinchlow, who, besides exercising that ancient profession, wasalso engaged in theatrical speculations, his advances being chiefly made upon the wearing apparel and properties, of which he acquired a large portion in this way. “A comfortable sort of person,” remarks Hartley Coleridge, “for three poets to be obliged to.” Especially when they, as it were, pledged to him the labour of their brains; and that when they were either already in prison, or afraid of that crisis in their miserable destiny. Nathaniel Field, the writer of this letter, was Massinger’s partner in the production of the “Fatal Dowry;” he had a share in the Globe and Blackfriar’s Theatres, in conjunction with Burbage, the originalRichard III.,Hamlet, andOthello; and with Lowin, the originalFalstaff. Field was also an actor, and he performed in Ben Jonson’s masque, “Cynthia’s Revels,” in 1600, when he appeared as one of the children of the Queen’s chapel. Robert Daborne was a man of good descent, a scholar and a clergyman, although the author of several plays; nor was he the only clerical dramatist in an age which was, indeed, "not an innocent one"--for Cartwright, also a play-writer, was a divine, and, as Fuller states, “a florid and seraphical preacher.”[188]

It has been remarked that the “Fatal Dowry”was like the production of a man in debt. Massinger might refer to his own case when he wrote:--

“I will not takeOne single piece of this great heap. Why should IBorrow that I have no means to pay; nay, amA very bankrupt, even in flattering hope,Of ever raising any.”

“I will not take

One single piece of this great heap. Why should I

Borrow that I have no means to pay; nay, am

A very bankrupt, even in flattering hope,

Of ever raising any.”

In addition to his poverty, to hard work, and the degradation of debt, Massinger was fully conscious that he had not, in giving up the certainty of a profession, attained a position in society. The dramatist’s occupation was scarcely, in those times, considered a creditable employment.[189]By the Puritans it was deemed sinful--by learned men, idle and trifling; and although lawyers and academicians, courtiers and ladies, and even the Queen and Princes of the blood, took the conspicuous parts, there was still a certain disrepute attached to the very instruments by means of which the stage was brought into what is justly called its “palmiest state.”

There were perhaps various reasons for the slow success of Massinger as a dramatist, and for that adverse fate the bitterness of which breaks forth in all his works. The age was Puritan; and he was supposed to have exchanged theProtestant principles with which he had entered Oxford for Romanist opinions--or rather, what we should now term Tractarian. That he may have been, as Mr. Gifford infers, from his leaving Oxford without a degree, a Roman Catholic, is borne out by no fact, although seemingly attested by the subjects of his plays--the “Virgin Martyr,” the “Renegade,” and the “Maid of Honour,” and from some passages in his other dramas. The bare suspicion was enough to make an author unfashionable at the time when the religion of the poet’s ancestors was the object of hatred and terror, and the laws against recusants were in all their hateful force. The plots of Massinger’s plays were, however, almost invariably taken from French or Italian novels, or from old legends, which embodied Romanism, and must, if Protestantized, have assumed the form of satire. Another drawback to Massinger’s popularity was the strong Whiggism which manifested itself in his plays, and which was so greatly at variance with the tone of the Court and of the higher classes during the early part of the reign of James I. He had not the reverence for constituted authority which marked the sentiments of Shakspeare, whilst his devotion to birth (not torankalone) savoured of the son of the retainer in a great house, where the servantgenerally is a far greater worshipper of the old descent than the real possessor of the ancient pedigree.[190]Thus, whilst this ill-fated man, full of genius, full of virtue, and of a deep sense of religion, was always tempting the slings and arrows of fortune, he was distrusted by the Puritans as a favourer of the Romish faith; he was avoided by the loyal as an enemy to passive obedience; and he must have been regarded with disgust by the rich city merchants and traders, for his contempt for newly-acquired wealth, and his merciless exposition of their assumption, in his dramas.

Massinger, therefore, lived and died in poverty. The language of complaint became habitual to him; he spoke of his despised state with agony--yet his patrons were many and honourable; but he addressed each successively in dedications which were masterpieces of pure English, as his last hope--his dependence on whom “ate into his very soul.” To Sir Robert Wiseman, of Thorrell’s Hall, in Essex, he “freely, and with a zealous thankfulness, acknowledges that for many years he had butfaintly subsisted, had he not often tasted of his great bounty.”[191]In his dedication of “The Picture” to the noble Society of the Inner Temple, he thanks them, “his honoured and selected friends,” for their “frequent bounties.” He lived upon presents; and of the comforts of a certain income he had not, probably, even one year’s experience. It is impossible to think of such a career without pain--starving one day, repulsed with condescension from the halls of the rich, another. He has depicted feelingly, indeed, the gentleman reduced to penury, in the “New Way to Pay Old Debts,” and the insults heaped on him by over-fed sycophants.

“Overreach(toWellborn)--Avaunt, thou beggar!If ever thou presume to own me more,I’ll have thee caged and whipp’d.“Amble(toWellborn)--Cannot you stay, to be serv’d among your fellowsFrom the basket, but you must press into the hall?”

“Overreach(toWellborn)--

Avaunt, thou beggar!

If ever thou presume to own me more,

I’ll have thee caged and whipp’d.

“Amble(toWellborn)--

Cannot you stay, to be serv’d among your fellows

From the basket, but you must press into the hall?”

The “basket” contained broken meat, which was placed in the porter’s lodge of great houses, to be distributed to the poor.

So, in the “Fatal Dowry,”Pontaliersays toLiladum:--

“Go to the basket, and repent.”

It is with true feeling that Massinger put into the mouth ofWellbornthese pleading lines:--

“Scorn me not, good lady!But, as in form you are angelical,Imitate the heavenly natures, and vouchsafeAt the least awhile to hear me. You will grantThe blood that runs in this arm is as nobleAs that which fills your veins; those costly jewelsAnd those rich clothes you wear, your men’s observanceAnd women’s flattery, are in you no virtues;Nor these rags, with my poverty, in me vices.”

“Scorn me not, good lady!

But, as in form you are angelical,

Imitate the heavenly natures, and vouchsafe

At the least awhile to hear me. You will grant

The blood that runs in this arm is as noble

As that which fills your veins; those costly jewels

And those rich clothes you wear, your men’s observance

And women’s flattery, are in you no virtues;

Nor these rags, with my poverty, in me vices.”

His life, however, was not without its solace. Happily for the literary men of the age, Ralegh had comprehended what is most essential both to mind and body, and in founding the meetings at the Mermaid had provided for the dramatist, poet, and philosopher, suitable relaxation. The place of meeting was at the Mermaid, in Bread Street, Cheapside. Here Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and many others, enjoyed the rare companionship of Ralegh, during the brief intervals in which he was not either engaged at the Court, or in distant expeditions. Here wit was the current coin of the company; toil was cast aside; “away with melancholy,” was the burden of the guests, who had probably many a care hidden in the core of their hearts. To Shakspeare’s joyous nature, and to the sanguine and then unbroken spirit of Ralegh, the sorrows of the past, the terrors of the future, might easily be forgotten, or suspended over a cup of richCanary; or, as night drew on, after a beaker of sack-posset. But one may picture to oneself the diffident, yet proud Philip Massinger, in his black doublet and plain white linen collar, with shabby tassels hanging from it, feasting, perhaps, at another man’s expense--trying to shine in these "wit-combats"--trying to forget “the basket,” and to seem prosperous; but, with the remembrance of the five pounds borrowed upon the security of his capital of brains, with a heavy sigh, as the delightful bard of Avon talked of retiring, on his fortune of two hundred a-year, to the quaint old town, his birth-place.

It must, however, have been a delicious opportunity of looking into minds as various as they were original. Beaumont has described the surface:--

“What things have we seenDone at the Mermaid!--heard words that have beenSo nimble and so full of subtle flame,As if that every one from whence they cameHad meant to put his whole wit in a jest,And had resolved to live a fool the restOf his dull life ...... and when that was gone,We left an air behind us, which aloneWas able to make the two next companies(Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise.”

“What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid!--heard words that have been

So nimble and so full of subtle flame,

As if that every one from whence they came

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

And had resolved to live a fool the rest

Of his dull life ...

... and when that was gone,

We left an air behind us, which alone

Was able to make the two next companies

(Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise.”

A modern writer has compared these meetingsto the “Noctes Ambrosianæ.” Happier far the wits of modern days, than the gifted men who, in the time of the Stuarts, were fain to cringe to patrons for their subsistence. None but unsuccessful authors will rail at modern publishers, when they remember the infinite miseries, with few signal exceptions, of those who were unhappy enough to depend on individuals and not on the public, whose will and taste the publisher alone studies.

Intemperance was, in those days, not only the sin of the middle-classes, but that of the Court; and both James and his Queen are said to have indulged in it. Massinger seems to have held what were rare opinions in his time, and to have been an advocate for total abstinence:--

"O take care of wine!Cold water is far better for your healths,Of which I am very tender."--The Picture.

"O take care of wine!

Cold water is far better for your healths,

Of which I am very tender."--The Picture.

He wrote rapidly, and his pen was never idle; yet he lived in miserable poverty. There is no record either that he was married--no indication that, like every other poet, he had an unfortunate or unrequited attachment. His pilgrimage had one solace, that of a fervent religion; which had, probably, much of the superstitions which were mingled, in those early days of Protestantism, with the reformed faith. The Church of England was then “an untrimmed vessel, lurchingnow towards Rome, and now towards Geneva;” it is therefore no wonder if many of the young, the impassioned, the imaginative, inclined to that form of faith and of worship which wore at least the semblance of venerable seniority.[192]

There is not a line in Massinger’s works that can either convict him of Romanism, or stamp him as a Protestant. Like many of his contemporaries, his romantic fancy was captivated by the picturesque ceremonial, the saintly observances, thedramaticservices of the Romish Church; and to this was probably added a disgust to that puritanic fervour by which not only the drama--to which there were, in fact, many just exceptions to be made--but all that was enchanting in life, poetry, secular music, revelry (not necessarily corrupting), was condemned as sinful, and all intellectual luxury prohibited and anathematized.

The Herbert family continued to be friends to Massinger--at all events, to lend him the support of their name. He dedicated “The New Way to Pay Old Debts,” the most celebrated of his plays, to Robert, Earl of Carnarvon. “I was born,” he says, “a most devoted servant to the thrice noble family of your incomparable lady, and am most ambitious, though at a proper distance, to be known to your lordship.” Robert, Earl of Carnarvon, who had married the Lady KatherineHerbert, although a friend and favourer of the Muses, and also Grand Falconer of England, is long since forgotten--whilst the poet, who addressed him “at a proper distance,” is remembered with pride and interest.

There was so close an intimacy at one time between the Earl of Pembroke’s family and that of the Duke of Buckingham, that it seems strange that no trace of Massinger’s having been patronized by him are to be discovered. In fact, the annals of Massinger’s life present little except the dates of his works. The eldest son of the unworthy Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, the poet’s chief patron, was married in 1634 to Lady Mary Villiers, then a mere girl. It is true that this alliance was formed six years after Buckingham’s death; but it was probably concerted before that event, after the fashion of the day, in which the infant in the cradle was often affianced by ambitious parents, and the nuptials solemnized at ten or twelve years of age. Charles, Lord Herbert set out on his travels directly after he had married his young wife, and died of small-pox at Florence in 1636. Massinger wrote a poem on his loss, among others, to his little bride:--

“True sorrow fellWith showers of tears--still bathe the widowed bedOf his dear spouse.”

“True sorrow fell

With showers of tears--still bathe the widowed bed

Of his dear spouse.”

The elegy, as it has been observed, had better not have been written; and his “dear spouse” very likely at that time preferred balls and revelries to her husband.

It was, however, not impossible that Villiers, to please the Herbert family, may have been the means of introducing Massinger to Charles I., who justly estimated his great merits, and proved a more generous as well as a worthier patron than the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery.

The political tenets of Massinger brought him on one occasion into considerable danger. They were, nevertheless, such as we should now term moderate; but they were irrelevantly introduced into his dramas, at a time when liberalism was almost regarded as next to treason. In 1631, Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, refused to receive a play of Massinger’s because it contained what that functionary called “dangerous matters,” as to the deposing of Sebastian, King of Portugal, and “thereby reflected upon Spain.” Even the name of that piece is unknown, although the Master of the Revels took care that the fee of twenty shillings for reading it over was paid to him. In 1638, when the question of the Ship-money was dividing the nation from the Court, Massinger, unable to control his indignation at the oppressive measures of Charles I., producedanother play, called “The King and the Subject,” founded on the history of Don Pedro the Cruel. It contained, amongst other free and bold passages, these lines:--

“Monies? We’ll raise supplies which way we please,And force you to subscribe to blanks, in whichWe’ll mulct you as we shall think fit. The CæsarsIn Rome were wise, acknowledging no lawsBut what their swords did ratify--the wivesAnd daughters of the senators bowing toTheir will as deities----”

“Monies? We’ll raise supplies which way we please,

And force you to subscribe to blanks, in which

We’ll mulct you as we shall think fit. The Cæsars

In Rome were wise, acknowledging no laws

But what their swords did ratify--the wives

And daughters of the senators bowing to

Their will as deities----”

It was evident to all who had occasion to peruse the play in manuscript, that Don Pedro was intended for the King. It was submitted, however, to Charles, who was at Newmarket; he read it, and then, in his own hand, marked the objectionable passage, and wrote underneath these words, “This is too insolent; note that the poet make it the speech of a King, Don Pedro, to his subjects.” This is one instance of the kind nature of the often mistaken King, who avoided condemning the play to oblivion.[193]That he encouraged Massinger--that he perceived, beneath the bitterness of a struggling man, a noble independence of character, is evident from Massinger’s plays being, in the commencement of that reign, the fashionable representations at Court. A bespeak atCourt was the most signal proof of success, and was all that could be desired by an author; and Charles took an opportunity of conferring this benefit on Massinger, when the poet’s feelings had been grievously wounded by the opposition made to “The Emperor of the East,” on its first performance by bespeaking that play.

Massinger recorded his gratitude for the bespeak in a prologue, in which he affirms his chief aim had been to please the King, and the fair Henrietta Maria, in this production:--

“What we now present,When first conceived in his vote and intent,Was sacred to your pleasure; in each partWith his best of fancy, judgment, language, art,Fashioned and formed so as might well, and may,Deserve a welcome, and no vulgar way.He durst not, sir, at such a solemn feast,Lard his grave matter with one scurrilous jest,But laboured that no passage might appearBut what the Queen, without a blush, might hear.”

“What we now present,

When first conceived in his vote and intent,

Was sacred to your pleasure; in each part

With his best of fancy, judgment, language, art,

Fashioned and formed so as might well, and may,

Deserve a welcome, and no vulgar way.

He durst not, sir, at such a solemn feast,

Lard his grave matter with one scurrilous jest,

But laboured that no passage might appear

But what the Queen, without a blush, might hear.”

In 1633, just after the appearance of Prynne’s “Histriomastix,” Charles ordered the representation of Massinger’s “Guardian” at Whitehall, on Sunday--an unwise act, in the eyes of all; a wrong one in those of most persons, who, without undue prejudice, view the Sabbath not only as a day of holy rest, but as one in which the thoughts and actions should be eminently pure, serene, anddevout. We cannot but allow that the Puritans had much reason on their side in condemning this profanation, which was, one can scarcely doubt, instigated by Queen Henrietta, or intended to please her. The plays of Massinger were peculiarly unsuited to the Sabbath, from their grossness.

It is not easy to say what amount of indelicacy the ladies of that period could listen to “without a blush.” Their confusion was, indeed, hidden beneath a black velvet mask. Even eighty or ninety years afterwards, the incomparable Queen Mary, the consort of William III., and her maids of honour, listened, under that protection, to the comedies of an age, perhaps, if possible, still more licentious in its plays than that in which Massinger wrote. Nor was it until the mask was abolished by law that the presence of women was recognized as controlling impropriety. In the reign of Anne, influenced by the correctness of the Court, as well as by the presence of ladies, unexceptionable plays, of loftier tone, by Steele and Addison, were placed on the stage. It is to be hoped that Queen Henrietta scarcely comprehended what she heard in a language of which she knew but little before her arrival in England; or perhaps, with the French notions, that a married woman, howeveryoung, may go everywhere and hear everything, even if only just emancipated from a convent or the nursery, she may not have thought herself and her attendants degraded by what they heard.

The Queen’s partiality for Massinger was soon known by another demonstration on her part. On the site of the old Monastery of Blackfriars, which had been signalized by the sitting of the Black Parliament, in the reign of Henry VIII., by the trial of Katharine of Arragon in its hall, and by the condemnation of Wolsey, James Burbage, and his company, known as the Earl of Leicester’s players, had erected a theatre. It was within the precincts, but not the jurisdiction, of the City; and the Lord Mayor, after ejecting Burbage from the City, tried in vain to drive them out of Blackfriars. The Puritan inhabitants of the precincts were also inimical to the playhouse, and petitioned the Lords and Council against its continuance there.[194]Nevertheless, Queen Henrietta bespoke “Cleander,” a lost play of Massinger’s, and went to see it acted at Blackfriars. She was justly censured for this imprudence--not, indeed, for her inconsistent patronage of dramas unfit for women to hear or read--a sin which that age perceivednot--but for a public attendance at a theatre, on the stage of which the young gallants of the time chose to sit, perched on stools, with tobacco pipes in their mouths--or congregated in twopenny refreshment-rooms, where ale and tobacco were sold.

It does not appear that the patronage of the Court gave permanent independence to Massinger. After the production of his last drama, “The Fair Anchoress of Pausilippo,” his career was over. He latterly lived at the Bankside, a residence probably chosen by him from its vicinity to various theatres--to Blackfriars, from its proximity to Blackfriars Road; to the Globe Theatre, in whichShakespeareShakespearehad a share; to Paris Garden, to the Rose, to the Hope, and the Swan. The Chirk, near the Church of St. Saviour’s, even in the time of Charles I., was the seat of all manner of low dissipation--bear-baiting, among the rest--and consequently of misery and vice. The district was not sanctified even by the holy edifice of St. Saviour’s; that noble church, the finest specimen of the early English style in London, the crypt of which is one of the un-seen sights of the metropolis, having, happily, escaped the restoring hand of some reprehensible churchwardens, who have done their best to spoil the nave, and to reduce itto the level of their own ideas. To his obscure home, near St. Saviour’s, Philip Massinger retired on the evening of the 16th of March, 1639-40, to rest, in his usual health. He was found dead in the morning in his bed. No friendly hand closed his eyes--no kind voice whispered into his ear words of hope and peace in Heaven, of which he had known so little on earth: no record of the mortal disease which thus struck him down--what would be called, in our time, prematurely--has been found. His death was, like his life, a blank. The parish register tells us all that can be told: “March 16, 1639-40.--Buried Philip Massinger,a stranger.” He was followed to the grave by actors, and buried in the churchyard of St. Saviour’s, then called St. Mary Overie, from an old suppressed priory. No stone marked his grave. His funeral was too poor for his remains to be interred within the church, where Lancelot Andrews and Henry Sacheverell preached, and where their bones repose; and where the poet Gower founded a chantry, and erected a tomb. Massinger was interred among the poor and the humble; perhaps his old companions of the playhouse, in after-days, slept, also, near his nameless grave.

His burial cost 2l.--a sum large enough, in those days, to ensure it, in Mr. Gifford’s eyes, aconsiderable amount of state and ceremony; and the word “stranger,” which grates so painfully on the feelings of those who reverence genius, is said by that authority to be usually affixed to the name of any one not belonging to the parish of St. Saviour. Yet, that his contemporaries put no epitaph on his tomb, that there was nothing but the sod over the cold clay, that no tradition even exists to show where he once lay, seems to prove that the Puritans were in the ascendancy on that sad day when the “stranger” was conveyed to his last home; and that they were meet ancestors of those who have since “restored” the old church, and have cleverly concealed the beauties of its interior.

Massinger had great qualities. He was religious, and of rare honesty and independence; yet his religion did not purify his thoughts, nor tend, consequently, to chasten his productions--and his circumstances wore away his real independence, as his dedications testify. His conceptions of what was noble, of what was virtuous, are beautifully expressed in those plays, which are yet so full of coarseness as to be unpresentable; and whilst he never loses any opportunity of exalting virtue, he seizes every occasion of depraving the taste, if not the mind. In this respect he is far moreculpable than Shakspeare; the age had deteriorated: James I. was coarse, and liked coarseness in others; his Court and his amusements all partook of that characteristic, which increased after the old chivalric style had declined. The elegance and purity in the works of Sir Philip Sidney and Spenser were succeeded by coarseness in those of Massinger, Ford, and Ben Jonson. When Massinger ceased to write freely--and, in so doing, to indulge every fancy, fair or foul--he wrote feebly. Of this “The Roman Actor,” to play which he “held to be the most perfect birth of his Minerva,” affords an example. It is free from indelicacy, but presents few of Massinger’s striking excellencies. The plot is bad; the scene in which the character ofParismight have been so powerfully developed, when tempted byDomitian, is poor. The tortures of the senators on the stage, and the appearance of their ghosts afterwards, savours of the love which Massinger had for the horrible--with the delineation of which he seems to have consoled himself for his forbearance in other points. Nevertheless, whilst the secondary characters in “The Roman Actor” are poor and indistinct--whilst those of the primary actors are striking and truthful--the timid tyranny ofDomitian, and the ambition ofDonitia, are admirably worked out.

The inordinate taste for revolting incidents on the stage was a great feature of the times; the contemporaries of Somerset and his wife were habituated to the excitement of fearful mysteries, of crimes, and sins half-disclosed, yet awful in the dimness of partial discovery. The frequent occurrence of murders, sometimes designedly, “but more often in hasty broils,” in that day, presented subjects which, to us, seem extravagant, but which were highly acceptable to the bravadoes, who, smoking on the stage, brandished their rapiers, and were ready to avenge a quarrel at the sword’s point. In nothing is the difference of manners so marked between those days and these as in the matter ofhonour. In those times, honour was perpetually in every man’s mouth--personal courage was prominently brought forward; and hence, every play had its braggart or its coward; and, as we see in the works of Beaumont and Fletcher,[195]honour had its code, its professional counsel, and its practical paid supporters. But, with this code, this practice, moral courage had little to do; the code of honour drew the main limit of caste, and the burgher and the tradesman were beneath it. So important was it, however, to observe the new codeaux ongles, that a manual or grammar of its rules wasapplied to satisfy the captious on nice points. Thus, whenAdorio, in Massinger’s “Maid of Honour,” laments that his honour and reputation should suffer from having taken a blow in public fromCaldoro, accompanied with the infamous “mark of coward,” he is referred byCamillo, to whom he pours forth his vexation, to Caranza’s “Grammar” for directions, in much the same manner as a lawyer would quote Lord St. Leonards on a point of law--or travellers call on Murray as their authority.

WhenAdoriotalks of what he “would do” in the matter,Camilloanswers:--

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