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)
by Philip Massinger
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This volume provides a selection of four plays by Philip Massinger who, from 1625 to 1640, replaced John Fletcher as principal dramatist for the King's Men, the chief London theatre company for more than forty years. The selection consists of two of Massinger's finest comedies, A New Way to Pay Old Debts and The City Madam, and his two best known tragedies, The Duke of Milan and The Roman Actor. These plays have interested readers, scholars and critics for hundreds of years, and although the show more tragedies have seldom been performed since the seventeenth century, the comedies have a long stage tradition. A New Way to Pay Old Debts has been performed more often than any other play by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and together with The City Madam continues to delight modern audiences. show lessTags
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Massinger is a prolific dramatist who wrote, or had a hand in, more than 50 plays. His specialty was tragicomedy, in which he imitated John Fletcher. His best-known play is "A New Way to Pay Old Debts" (1621), based on Middleton's "A Trick to Catch the Old One." Sir Giles Overreach reflects the historical Sir Giles Mompesson, a notorious show more capitalist and extortionist, who was tried in 1621. There is a good deal of snobbery in Massinger's play, and the class hatred of Sir Giles is frenzied and passionate. "A New Way to Pay Old Debts" has had an active theatrical history from its own day to the present, especially as a vehicle for the grandly histrionic role of Overreach. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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