Herbert 27 May 1624. As Nicholas Tooley, who personated one of the principal characters, died in June 1623, this play must have been produced some time before it was licensed. It is a singular and powerful play, but its performance had been discontinued in the time of Langbaine, who mentions it as ‘well worth reviving.’ ‘Rule a Wife and have a Wife,’ 1640, was licensed by Herbert 19 Oct. 1624, and performed at court twice in that year. It is among the very best of Fletcher's comedies, and met with great success. In 1759, having undergone some alteration, it was revived by Garrick, and it has been occasionally played in the nineteenth century. The underplot is founded on the eleventh of Cervantes's ‘Novelas Exemplares.’ Davies mentions a somewhat absurd tradition that the character of Cacafogo ‘was intended as a rival to Falstaff’ (Dram. Miscell. ii. 406). The ‘Chances,’ 1647, probably a late work, was deservedly popular. The plot is taken from ‘La Señora Cornelia,’ one of Cervantes's ‘Novelas Exemplares.’ In 1682 an alteration by Villiers, duke of Buckingham, who completely rewrote acts iv. and v., was produced at the theatre in Dorset Gardens; in 1773 Garrick brought out another alteration at Drury Lane; and in 1821 ‘Don John, or the Two Violettas, a musical drama in three acts,’ was played at Covent Garden.
Massinger's hand has been already traced in three plays—the ‘Honest Man's Fortune,’ the ‘Knight of Malta,’ and ‘Thierry and Theodoret,’ but there are many others to which he contributed. Sir Aston Cokaine, in his ‘Epitaph on Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. Philip Massinger’ (Poems, 1662, p. 186), expressly states: ‘Playes they did write together, were great friends.’ In an address ‘To my Cousin Mr. Charles Cotton’ (the elder Cotton) he mentions that Massinger was associated with Fletcher in the authorship of several of the plays published in the 1647 folio. Cokaine also addressed some lines of remonstrance to the publishers of the folio of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, Humphrey Moseley and Humphrey Robinson, saying that
… Beaumont of those many writ in few,
And Massinger in other few.
Although he claims to have been a friend of Massinger, Cokaine's information was derived from the elder Cotton, ‘Fletcher's chief bosome-friend informed me so.’ Shirley, who edited the 1647 folio (or advised the publishers), makes no mention of Massinger in his address to the reader. Humphrey Moseley in a prefatory note states that he had once had the intention of printing Fletcher's works by themselves, ‘because single and alone he would make a just volume;’ but he also is silent on the subject of Massinger. Internal evidence shows clearly that Cokaine was abundantly justified in claiming for Massinger a share in some of the plays printed in the 1647 folio. But Fletcher collaborated with others besides Massinger. Among the ‘Henslowe Papers’ is preserved a letter addressed to Henslowe by Field, Daborne, and Massinger, in which the three playwrights beg for an advance of 5l. to supply their urgent necessities; and to this letter, which was written some time before January 1615–1616, Daborne appends a postscript: ‘The mony shall be abated out of the mony remaynes for the play of Mr. Fletcher and ours’ (the play to which Daborne refers may perhaps be the ‘Honest Man's Fortune’). External and internal evidence agree in attributing to William Rowley a share in some of the dramas that pass as the work of ‘Beaumont and Fletcher;’ and it is certain that others were either altered or completed by James Shirley.
The ‘Queen of Corinth,’ 1647, was produced some time before March 1618–19, as one of the principal characters was personated by Burbage. Fletcher's hand can only be detected in the second act; the first and fifth acts are by Massinger, and the rest of the play appears to be by Middleton and Rowley. The fine tragedy of ‘Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt,’ first printed from manuscript by the present writer (A Collection of Old English Plays, vol. ii.), is unquestionably the joint work of Massinger and Fletcher. It was produced in August 1619, shortly after Barneveldt's execution. Mr. S. L. Lee (Athenæum, 19 Jan. 1884) discovered among the State Papers two letters of Thomas Locke to Carleton, the English ambassador at the Hague. On 14 Aug. 1619 Locke wrote that when the players ‘were bringing of Barnevelt upon the stage’ the Bishop of London at the last moment forbade the performance. On 27 Aug. he announced: ‘Our players have fownd the meanes to go through wth the play of Barnevelt, and it hath had many spectators and received applause.’ Mr. Boyle (Bullen, Old Plays, vol. ii., Appendix) has drawn up an elaborate analysis of the play, assigning to each their respective shares in the composition. To 1619 probably belongs the lost play of the ‘Jeweller of Amsterdam,’ which was entered in the ‘Stationers' Books,’ 8 April 1654, as the work of Fletcher, Field, and Massinger. Mr. Fleay's suggestion that the subject of this play was the murder of John Van Wely is highly probable. The
