Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/25

 claim. External evidence proves that Nathaniel Field and Robert Daborne were among his collaborators, and that with Fletcher he formed at an early period a close literary partnership. Internal evidence suggests that he and Cyril Tourneur produced together the ‘Second Maiden's Tragedy’ as early as 1611. Dekker joined him in the ‘Virgin Martyr’ in 1620. Traces of Massinger's hand have been doubtfully suggested in such early works of Beaumont and Fletcher as the ‘Scornful Lady,’ written about 1610, ‘Cupid's Revenge,’ acted in January 1611–12, and the ‘Captain,’ written very early in 1613; but there is little likelihood of Massinger's connection with Fletcher until late in 1613. From about that year Fletcher and Massinger wrote regularly in conjunction until Fletcher's death in 1625. Third or fourth pens occasionally joined them. Sir Aston Cokayne [q. v.] thrice in his poems mentions the friendship subsisting between Fletcher and Massinger, and their association in dramatic composition [see {{sc|Fletcher, John, 1579–1625], but the editions of Fletcher's works, which contain most of their joint efforts, ignore Massinger's name altogether. For some years Fletcher and Massinger were connected with the same company of actors. Both, with Field, joined the king's men in 1616. At the end of 1623 Massinger temporarily transferred his services to the Cockpit company (queen's men, i.e. Lady Elizabeth's), and for them he wrote, apparently for the first time unaided, three pieces, the ‘Parliament of Love,’ the ‘Bondman,’ and the ‘Renegado.’ After Fletcher's death in 1625 he rejoined the king's men. In 1627 his ‘Great Duke of Florence’ was prepared for another company (the queen's servants). There is no other indication of Massinger's connection with any but the king's company at the period, and consequently, with the exception of about a year and a half (1623–5), Massinger may be regarded as writing from 1616 to his death on 18 March 1639–40 for that company alone.

Massinger's literary friends included James Smith (1605–1667), editor of ‘Musarum Deliciæ,’ whom Massinger, according to Wood, habitually called his son ({{sc|Wood}}, iii. 776). With the Herbert family he maintained friendly relations to the end. Aubrey describes him as servant to Philip, the fourth earl, and in receipt of a pension of 30l. or 40l. from his master. In 1624 he dedicated his ‘Bondman’ to Earl Philip, and he chose Robert Dormer, earl of Carnarvon, as sponsor for his best-known comedy, ‘A New Way to Pay Old Debts,’ in 1633, on the ground that ‘I was born a devoted servant to the thrice noble family of your incomparable lady,’ the daughter of Earl Philip. In 1634 Massinger wrote ‘verses on the death of Charles, Lord Herbert, [third] son to Philip, [fourth] Earl of Pembroke’ (Brit. Mus. MS. Reg. 18 A xx.). Other men of eminence took notice of him, he tells us, and were patrons of his ‘humble studies’ (Unnatural Combat, Ded.) Among them was Sir Warham St. Leger, to whose son Walter he dedicated his ‘Unnatural Combat’ (1639). He acknowledged that he had ‘tasted of the bounty’ of ‘Sir Robert Wiseman of Thorrell's Hall in Essex’ (Great Duke, Ded.), and of Sir Francis Foljambe and Sir Thomas Bland (Maid of Honour, Ded.) His friend Sir Aston Cokayne brought his work to the notice of his uncle, Lord Mohun of Okehampton, to whom Massinger dedicated his ‘Emperor of the East.’

His political views, like those of his patron Earl Philip, inclined to the popular party. In the ‘Bondman,’ 1623, he clearly denounced Buckingham under the disguise of Gisco (i. 1), and supported the Herberts in their quarrel with James I's favourite. Thinly veiled reflections on current politics figure in ‘Believe as you List,’ the ‘Emperor of the East,’ and the ‘Maid of Honour.’ On 11 Jan. 1630–1 Sir Henry Herbert [q. v.] refused a license to an unnamed play of Massinger ‘because it did contain dangerous matter, as the deposing of Sebastian, king of Portugal, by Philip [the second], and there being a peace sworn betwixt the kings of England and Spain.’ This piece seems to have been an early draft of ‘Believe as you List.’ According to his own account he made a very narrow income out of his literary pursuits.

He died suddenly in his house on the Bankside, Southwark, near the Globe Theatre, in the middle of March 1639–40. ‘He went to bed well, and was dead before morning: whereupon his body, being accompanied by comedians, was buried about the middle of that ch. yard belonging to St. Saviour's Church there, commonly called the Bullhead ch. yard,’ on 18 March 1639–40 (WOOD, Athenæ, ed. Bliss). According to the entry of burial in the parish register he was a ‘stranger,’ that is a non-parishioner (Notes and Queries, 1st ser. x. 206). Cokayne says that he was buried in the same grave as Fletcher. The theory that Massinger was converted to Roman catholicism in middle life depends on the catholic tone of many passages in his ‘Renegado’ and the ‘Virgin Martyr,’ which he wrote with Dekker, but the proofs are by no means conclusive.

Massinger was married, and left a widow, who at one time resided at Cardiff, and received from the Earl of Pembroke, according to Aubrey, the pension bestowed on her