INTRODUCTORY NOTE PHILIP MASSINGER was born at Salisbury in 1584. Though the son of a Member of Parliament, he seems to have inherited no means, for the first notice we have of him after his leaving Oxford in 1606 is a petition addressed to Henslowe by him and two friends for a payment of five pounds on account, to get them out of prison. After Beaumont retired from play-writing, Massinger became Fletcher's chief partner, and there is evidence that there existed between them a warm friendship. All Massinger's relations with his fellow authors of which we have record seem to have been pleasant; and the impression of his personality which one derives from his work is that of a dignified, hard-working, and conscientious man. He seems to have been much interested in public affairs, and he at times came into collision with the authorities on account of the introduction into his plays of more or less veiled allusions to political personages and events. He died in 1640. The best known of Massinger's works is "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," which was probably acted for the first time in 1625. The popularity of the play is chiefly due to the principal characters, Sir Giles Overreach, a usurer and extortioner, drawn, however, on such magnificent lines as to rise far above the conventional miser of literature. Overreach is presented with great dramatic skill, the situations being chosen and elaborated so as to throw his figure into high relief; and though his villainy reaches the pitch of monstrosity, the illusion of life is preserved. Here, as elsewhere, Massinger's sympathies are on the side of wholesome morals; and it was probably the powerful didactic tendency of the play and its fine rhetoric which, united with the impressiveness of the main figure, enabled it to hold the stage into the nineteenth century. A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS DRAMATIS PERSONÆ LORD LOVELL, an English Lord. SIR GILES OVERREACH, a cruel extortioner. [FRANK] WELLBORN, a Prodigal. [TOM] ALLWORTH, a young Gentleman, Page to Lord Lovell. GREEDY, a hungry Justice of Peace. MARRALL, a Term-Driver; a creature of Sir Giles Overreach. [Enter] WELLBORN [in tattered apparel], TAPWELL, and Froth Wellborn. TO BOUSE?1 nor no tobacco? NR Tap. Not a suck, sir; Nor the remainder of a single can Left by a drunken porter, all night pall'd2 too. Froth. Not the dropping of the tap for your morning's draught, sir: 'Tis verity, I assure you. 1 Booze, drink. 2 Staled. Well. Verity, you brache! 3 The devil turn'd precisian!* Rogue, what am I? Tap. Troth, durst I trust you with a looking-glass, To let you see your trim shape, you would quit me And take the name yourself. Well. Tap. How, dog! Even so, sir. And I must tell you, if you but advance Your Plymouth cloak you shall be soon instructed There dwells, and within call, if it please your worship, A potent monarch call'd the constable, That does command a citadel called the stocks; Whose guards are certain files of rusty billmen No rage, sir. Tap. At his own peril. Do not put yourself You must no more remember; not in a dream, sir. Well. Why, thou unthankful villain, dar'st thou talk thus! Is not thy house, and all thou hast, my gift? Tap. I find it not in chalk; and Timothy Tapwell Does keep no other register. bose riots fed and cloth'd thee? Wert thou not a on my father's land, and proud to be edge in his house? 6 What I was, sir, it skills not; Y you are, is apparent. Now, for a farewell, 、e you talk of father, in my hope it will torment you, e tell your story. Your dead father, My quodam master, was a man of worship, John Wellborn, justice of peace and quorum, • Puritan. 5 Cudgel. 6 Matters. 7 A select number of the more w, whose presence was necessary to constitute the bench. And stood fair to be custos rotulorum; 8 Bore the whole sway of the shire, kept a great house, Very hardly: But to my story: You cannot out of your way. On foolish mortgages, statutes, and bonds, For a while suppli'd your looseness, and then left you. Well. Some curate hath penn'd this invective, mongrel. And you have studied it. Tap. Your land gone, I have not done yet. and your credit not worth a token You grew a common borrower; no man scap'd Your paper-pellets,' from the gentleman To the beggars on highways, that sold you switches Well. I shall switch your brains out. Gave entertainment Well. Clubbers by night. Tap. Yes, to whores and canters, True, but they brought in profit, And had a gift to pay for what they call'd for, 8 Keeper of the county records. 10 9 Acknowledgments of indebtedness. 10 Whining beggars. |