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Updated: May 16, 2025
"For the English poets, I will let you off at present with Milton, Dryden, Pope, and Shakespeare; and remember, always in books, keep the best company. Don't read a line of Ovid till you have mastered Virgil; nor a line of Thomson till you have exhausted Pope; nor of Massinger, till you are familiar with Shakespeare."
On the other hand, these nobler qualities by themselves will not suffice to confer immortality, unless they are sustained by the devices of the adroit craftsman. As Massinger asserted long ago: No fair colors Can fortify a building faintly joined.
I cannot help here repeating what I have expressed before, that Henry VIII. as we have it is not the work of Shakespeare and Fletcher, but of Massinger and Fletcher, with only fragments of the Shakespeare play. Act I. Scene 3, is by Fletcher. Act II. Scene 1, is by Massinger. On page 231 we have, When the hot lyon's breath Burns up the fields. Compare Parliament of Love, I. 5., Montrose,
The best proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers which suddenly broke into this field; Kyd, Marlow, Greene, Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Peele, Ford, Massinger, Beaumont, and Fletcher. The secure possession, by the stage, of the public mind, is of the first importance to the poet who works for it. He loses no time in idle experiments.
Beaumont and Fletcher, forgetting the deep meaning of life, strove for effect by increasing the sensationalism of their plays; Webster reveled in tragedies of blood and thunder; Massinger and Ford made another step downward, producing evil and licentious scenes for their own sake, making characters and situations more immoral till, notwithstanding these dramatists' ability, the stage had become insincere, frivolous, and bad.
Shakspere had died quietly at Stratford in Milton's childhood; the last and worst play of Ben Jonson appeared in the year of his settlement at Horton; and though Ford and Massinger still lingered on, there were no successors for them but Shirley and Davenant.
By literary comedies, I mean comedies of classic inspiration, drawn chiefly from Menander and the Greek New Comedy through Terence; or else comedies of the poet's personal conception, that have had no model in life, and are humorous exaggerations, happy or otherwise. These are the comedies of Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Fletcher.
By literary comedies, I mean comedies of classic inspiration, drawn chiefly from Menander and the Greek New Comedy through Terence; or else comedies of the poet's personal conception, that have had no model in life, and are humorous exaggerations, happy or otherwise. These are the comedies of Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Fletcher.
I have begun to read "Wilhelm Meister" in German. I read about three or four hours a day, then an hour or two in Latin, and the rest to poetical reading Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, Massinger, Shakespeare, and the Bible, at present. In Worcester I found Montaigne, whom I devoured. What cheerful good sense! I have begun also to learn two or three of B.'s waltzes from note.
"William shall take it down to Bayswater the first thing to-morrow no, to-day, I mean," he said, rubbing his hot eyes. "I fancy it will do my business!" And it did. "Thou in justice, If from the height of majesty we can Look down upon thy lowness and embrace it, Art bound with fervour to look up to me." MASSINGER, Roman Actor.
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