Philip Massinger - First Plays

First Plays

During these years he worked in collaboration with other dramatists. A joint letter, from Nathan Field, Robert Daborne and Philip Massinger, to Philip Henslowe, begs for an immediate loan of five pounds to release them from their "unfortunate extremity," the money to be taken from the balance due for the "play of Mr. Fletcher's and ours." A second document shows that Massinger and Daborne owed Henslowe £3 on 4 July 1615. The earlier note probably dates from 1613, and from this time Massinger apparently worked regularly with John Fletcher. Sir Aston Cockayne, Massinger's constant friend and patron, refers in explicit terms to this collaboration in a sonnet addressed to Humphrey Moseley on the publication of his folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (Small Poems of Divers Sorts, 1658), and in an epitaph on the two poets he says: "Plays they did write together, were great friends, And now one grave includes them in their ends."

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Famous quotes containing the word plays:

    This Light inspires, and plays upon
    The nose of Saint like Bag-pipe drone,
    And speaks through hollow empty Soul,
    As through a Trunk, or whisp’ring hole,
    Such language as no mortal Ear
    But spiritual Eve-droppers can hear.
    Samuel Butler (1612–1680)

    Better to be despised and have a servant, than to be self-important and lack food.
    Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 12:9.

    RSV translation reads, “Better is a man of humble standing who works for himself than one who plays the great man but lacks bread.”