Philip Massinger

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Philip Massinger

Philip Massinger , spr. mässindscher, (born 1583 or November 24, 1584 in Wilton or Salisbury , Wiltshire , † probably March 18, 1640 in London ) was an English playwright who was one of the more prolific writers of Elizabethan theater .

Life

Scene from The City Madam , Sadlers Wells Theater, London 1844

Philip Massinger was the son of the court official Arthur Massinger (1550-1603) and his wife Anne Crompton. Around 1602 he became a student at St. Alban's Hall at the University of Oxford and converted to Catholicism there under the influence of his teachers .

In 1606 Massinger finished his studies and settled in London as a writer. There he joined John Fletcher , with whom he worked for some time. Probably his first play of his own was The Maid of Honor (around 1621), a drama with a romantic plot. 1620 appeared The Virgin Martyr , which he probably wrote in collaboration with Thomas Dekker .

Ben Jonson and Francis Beaumont were patrons and role models for Massinger. Even William Shakespeare was well known to him, if they had known personally, is debatable.

In 1625, Massinger succeeded Shakespeare and Fletcher as the first playwright in the King's Men , the most famous drama group of the time.

Massinger's pieces partly reflected the conservatism of their author's values ​​and often focused on character tests designed to be effective on the stage. The protagonists in the romantic comedy The Great Duke of Florence (1627; The Grand Duke of Florence , approx. 1881) experience an actual moral dilemma. Massinger's better-known works include his more realistic comedies A New Way to Pay Old Debts (written around 1625, printed in 1633) and The City Madam (1632; Die Bürgersfrau als Dame , 1836). In these two plays the conflicts between the lower nobility and the rising bourgeoisie are staged. Due to its metadramatic nature , Massinger's tragedy The Roman Actor (printed in 1626; The Roman Mime , 1890) also attracted attention.

Philip Massinger probably died in London on March 18, 1640.

reception

Massinger was a typical representative of the courtly aristocratic play. Contemporaries often preferred Massinger to the works of Francis Beaumont or John Fletcher. He enjoyed considerable popularity during his lifetime and was not forgotten after his death and the closure of the theaters in 1642. In the 18th century, the works of Massinger were highly valued and often even compared with those of Shakespeare. In today's theater scene, however, Massinger has hardly any significance. This is partly due to the negative judgment of TS Eliot , who criticized Massinger's works as "anemic" and ostensibly moralistic and found his characters to be weak. In contrast, more recent literary studies attempt to take a more differentiated view of Massinger's dramatic work, although Massinger's view of a principled moralist is also continued in the current literary critical discussion.

Among the works Massinger's which are still occasionally staged today, belongs especially his satirical comedy A New Way to Pay Old Debts (ca. 1625; A new way old debts to pay , 1836).

One focus in the works was the outstanding position of the Catholic Church; Associated with this were sometimes social issues, which, however, were only pointed out and in no way resolved.

Works (selection)

  • The Renegado (1624)
  • Der Roman Mime ( The Roman Actor ), (first performed 1626, printed 1629)
  • The Maid of Honor (around 1621; possibly in collaboration with Francis Beaumont)
  • The Virgin Martyr (1622; presumably in collaboration with Thomas Dekker)
  • The Duke of Milan ( The Duke of Milan , 1623)
  • Unnatural Combat
  • The unfortunate dowry ( Fatal Dowry , 1619)
  • The Bondman
  • The Grand Duke of Florence ( The Great Duke of Florence , 1630)
  • The Citizen's Wife as a Lady ( The City Madam , 1632)
  • To pay a new way old debts ( "A New Way to Pay Old Debts", 1633)
  • Believe as ye list (1631)
  • Beggars Bush (with Francis Beaumont)
  • The Custom of the Country (with John Fletcher)
  • with Thomas Middleton , William Rowley : The Old Law 1656 (posthumous)

Work edition

  • Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson (Eds.): The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger. 5 volumes, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1976.

Literature (selection)

  • Doris Adler: Philip Massinger (Twayne's English authors series; 435). Twayne, Boston, Mass. 1987, ISBN 0-8057-6934-X .
  • Francis Cunningham (Ed.): William Gifford : The plays of Philip Massinger; From the text of William Gifford. With the addition of the tragedy "Believe as you list" ed. By Francis Cunningham . London: Chatto and Windus, ca.1887.
  • Ian Fletcher: Beaumont and Fletcher . Longmans Green, London 1967.
  • Martin Garrett: Philip Massinger's attitude to spectacle (Jacobean drama studies; 72). University, Salzburg 1984.
  • Martin Garrett (Ed.): Massinger: the critical heritage . London [u. a.]: Routledge, 1991. ISBN 0-415-03340-3 .
  • Philip Edwards, Colin Gibson (Eds.): The plays and poems of Philip Massinger . London: Oxford Univ. Pr., 1976.
  • Colin Gibson (Ed.): The selected plays of Philip Massinger: The Duke of Milan; The Roman actor; A new way to pay old debts; The city madam . (Plays by Renaissance and Restoration dramatists). Cambridge [u. a.]: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1978. ISBN 0-521-21728-8 ; ISBN 0-521-29243-3 .
  • Douglas Howard (Ed.): Philip Massinger: a crit. reassessment . Cambridge [u. a.]: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1985. ISBN 0-521-25895-2 .
  • Cyrus Hoy: The Shares of Fletcher and His Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon . Studies in Bibliography , 1956–62.
  • Naomi Conn Liebler: Philip Massinger's The Roman actor and the idea of ​​the play within a play . Stony Brook, State Univ. of New York, Diss., 1976.
  • Terence P. Logan: Philip Massinger . In: Terence P. Logan, Denzell S. Smith, eds., The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama . Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1978.
  • Alfred Jean-François Mézières: Contemporains et successeurs de Shakespeare . 5th rev. u. corr. Paris edition: Hachette, 1913.
  • James Phelan: On Philip Massinger . (in Vol. 2 of the journal Anglia : Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie , Halle 1879. Leipzig: Univ., Diss., 1878.)
  • Irmgard Röhricht: Philip Massinger's ideal of women . Munich: Piloty & Loehle, 1920.
  • Samuel A. and Dorothy R. Tannenbaum: Philip Massinger. Michel de Montaigne. Anthony Mundy. Thomas Nashe. George Peele. Thomas Randolph . (Elizabethan bibliographies; Vol. 6). Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1967.

Web links

Commons : Philip Massinger  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Author: Philip Massinger  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Jens Mittelbach: Massinger, Philip. In: Eberhard Kreutzer, Ansgar Nünning (Hrsg.): Metzler Lexicon of English-speaking authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 386. See also Philip Massinger 1583-1640 . On: luminarium.org. Retrieved on July 24, 2015. The time of Massinger's death is not given uniformly in all sources, TheatreHistory gives March 10, 1639, cf. Philip Massinger . On: TheatreHistory.com. Retrieved on July 24, 2015. The Encyclopædia Britannica only mentions 1639/40 as the year of death without a precise date. See The Virgin Martyr . On: Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 24, 2015.
  2. ↑ See Jens Mittelbach: Massinger, Philip. In: Eberhard Kreutzer, Ansgar Nünning (Hrsg.): Metzler Lexicon of English-speaking authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 386f.
  3. ↑ See The Virgin Martyr . On: Encyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved July 24, 2015. See also Holly Crawford Pickett: Dramatic Nostalgia and Spectacular Conversion in Dekker and Massinger's The Virgin Martyr. In: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900. Volume 49, Number 2, 2009, pp. 437-62, here p. 437, and Philip Massinger . On: TheatreHistory.com. Retrieved July 24, 2015.
  4. ↑ See Jens Mittelbach: Massinger, Philip. In: Eberhard Kreutzer, Ansgar Nünning (Hrsg.): Metzler Lexicon of English-speaking authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 386f.
  5. ↑ See Jens Mittelbach: Massinger, Philip. In: Eberhard Kreutzer, Ansgar Nünning (Hrsg.): Metzler Lexicon of English-speaking authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 386f. See also Philip Massinger . On: TheatreHistory.com. Retrieved July 24, 2015.
  6. ^ On the reception of Massinger's Jens Mittelbach: Massinger, Philip. In: Eberhard Kreutzer, Ansgar Nünning (Hrsg.): Metzler Lexicon of English-speaking authors. 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , p. 386. See also Philip Massinger . On: TheatreHistory.com. Retrieved July 24, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Massinger, Philip
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English poet and translator
DATE OF BIRTH 1583 or November 4, 1584
PLACE OF BIRTH Wilton or Salisbury , Wiltshire
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: March 18, 1640
Place of death London