A New Way To Pay Old Debts - The Villain

The Villain

The play also falls into the category of the "villain play," a drama in which the dominant figure is not a traditional protagonist or hero but his antagonist, a figure of evil. In the context of English Renaissance drama, the villain play grew out of the "ranting Herod" of the Medieval morality play. In the Elizabethan era, Christopher Marlowe was the great innovator in the villain play, with Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus and The Jew of Malta; Shakespeare's Richard III is another obvious example in the sub-genre.

In A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Massinger took the villain play in a new direction of social realism: his villain is not a king or a conqueror but a credible figure from contemporary life. The play's dominating character, Sir Giles Overreach, is based on the real-life Sir Giles Mompesson. (Sir Giles' assistant in villainy, Justice Greedy, was suggested by Mompesson's associate Sir Francis Michell.) The power of the role of Sir Giles may lie in Massinger's success in depicting a blatant villain who has a quality of everyday believability. Sir Giles is down-to-earth in his cold malice:

I'll therefore buy some cottage near his manor,
Which done, I'll make my men break ope his fences,
Ride o'er his standing corn, and in the night
Set fire on his barns, or break his cattle's legs.
These trespasses draw on suits, and suits expenses,
Which I can spare, but will soon beggar him. (Act II, scene i)

The audience is presented with a character they might meet in their own lives, to their own cost.

Read more about this topic:  A New Way To Pay Old Debts

Famous quotes containing the word villain:

    “Hamlet. There’s never a villain dwelling in all Denmark
    But he’s an arrant knave.
    Horatio. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
    to tell us this.”
    —William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    “A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development.”
    —Agnes Repplier (1858–1950)