Phillip Massinger

Small display at the Globe Theatre looking at the life and work of the playwright Philip Massinger.

Massinger was the leading writer for the King’s Men following Shakespeare and Fletcher and is buried in Southwark Cathedral with Fletcher. Massinger’s plays reflected the tensions of the time and included satirical portraits of the court.

Massinger has largely been forgotten as a lot of his work was done with Fletcher but in a folio edition of Fletchers plays in 1647 Massinger is not acknowledged and Sir Francis Beaumont it named as Fletcher’s main collaborator. However Massinger wrote over 50 plays on his own or with others. 11 plays by him were lost when an antiquarian’s cook used them to light fires!

The display consisted of a good information board alongside three cases with the earliest copies of his plays in chronological order. They show the usual Jacobean themes but picked some unusual settings and protagonists such as The Roman Actor, Emperor of the East about Byzantium and The Picture, with a strong female role.

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