Virtual Grub Street: Cardenio: Having Lain my Marker Down on Massinger.

I’ve just released my new Shakespeare study Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff: the Hamlet of 1589.[1] In the introductory essay (which can be read for free by clicking the “Look inside” feature on its Amazon Kindle book page) I decided to put forward the actual facts regarding some few of the vast number of new theories popping up in the Shakespeare Authorship space. Because none of the answers is provided together with its own separate explanatory essay it is more a matter of my having put down my marker in response to those claims. I have, however, done considerable research in each of the matters.

My thought is to begin laying out the cases in posts on the Virtual Grub Street blogs in the months ahead. It may be preferable to present all of the evidence on the blogs. For so big a question as why Shakespeare played no part in the writing of the play generally referred to as Cardenio, however, the final explanation will likely need to go in the next Shakespeare Authorship In-Progress journal.[2]

On the Cardenio question, I begin with a selection of quotes from Cruickshank’s study of the life and works of Philip Massinger.[3] Massinger was born in 1584. In 1613, when Francis Beaumont, of the playwriting duo Beaumont and Fletcher, retired for the last three years of his life from playwriting, Massinger became John Fletcher’s most frequent new collaborator.

The highly popular 1647 folio edition of the plays of “Beaumont and Fletcher” neglected to credit Massinger for either his later revisions of the duo’s plays or for the plays he and Fletcher co-wrote after Beaumont’s retirement. About some Fletcher and Massinger plays we can be pretty sure. About Cardenio, the historical record is silent except that Humphrey Moseley, the publisher of the Beaumont and Fletcher folio, entered it in the Stationers’ Registers as having been written by Fletcher and Shakespeare. He could not have consulted Fletcher in the matter who had died in 1625. It was not included in the folio. Moseley seems never to have published it at all. No copy has ever been discovered.

The plays in which Massinger had any substantial hand, the style of his portions was quite close to that of Shakespeare.[4] Cruickshank has chosen some two dozen parallel quotations to make the point. I have chosen a half dozen from those examples that I think are most immediately effective.

The entire lines below, from Massinger, are consistently in precise iambic pentameter with few substitutions, which also reflects the style throughout all of his extant plays. He rarely reverses metrical feet or plies feminine endings. On the other hand, he uses many more run-on lines and double endings than other playwrights.[5]

The following examples all appear in Cruickshank between pages 164 and 167.

Emperor of the East, V., 2, 103 :

Can I call back yesterday, with all their aids

That bow unto my sceptre? or restore

My mind to that tranquillity and peace

It then enjoyed?

Othello, III., 3, 330:

Not poppy, nor mandragora,

Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,

Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep

Which thou owedst yesterday.

Virgin Martyr, I., 1, 342:

An humble modesty, that would not match

A molehill with Olympus.

Great Duke of Florence, IV., 2, 305:

As the lowly shrub is to the lofty cedar,

Or a molehill to Olympus, if compar'd,

I am to you, Sir.

Roman Actor, III., 1, 3:

If you but compare

What I have suffered with your injuries

(Though great ones, I confess), they will appear

Like molehills to Olympus.

(Cf. also Duke of Milan, I., 3, 193.)

Coriolanus, V., 3, 29:

My mother bows;

As if Olympus to a molehill should

In supplication nod.

Unnatural Combat, IV., 2, 6:

Let his passion work, and like a hot-reined horse

'Twill quickly tire itself.

Henry VIII, I., 1, 132-4:

Anger is like

A full-hot horse, who being allow' d his way

Self-mettle tires him.

Virgin Martyr, V., 2, 82:

There is a scene that I must act alone.

Romeo and Juliet, IV., 3, 19:

My dismal scene I needs must act alone.

Old Law, IV., 1, 36:

Besides, there will be charges saved too; the same rosemary

that serves for the funeral will serve for the wedding.

Hamlet, I., 2, 180:

Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! the funeral baked meats

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

Parliament of Love, III., 3, 133:

A hurtful vow

Is in the breach of it better commended,

Than in the keeping.

Hamlet, I., 4, 15:

It is a custom

More honour'd in the breach than the observance.

[1] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff: the Hamlet of 1589 (2022). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09WC94FGW

[2] Shakespeare Authorship In-Progress series https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B096L2KPR4

[3] Cruickshank, A. H. Philip Massinger (1920).

[4] Ibid. 57. “Massinger was a devoted admirer and imitator of Shakspere in thought, device, and expression”.

[5] Ibid. 56-7. ‘Boyle, who declares that " Marlowe and Massinger are the two extremes of the metrical movement in the dramatists," has pointed out that " Massinger 's blank verse shows a larger proportion of run-on lines and double endings in harmonious union than any of his contemporaries. Cartwright and Tourneur have more run-on lines, but not so many double endings. Fletcher has more double endings, but very few run-on lines. Shakspere and Beaumont alone exhibit a somewhat similar metrical style." This is interesting, because we shall see later on that Massinger was a devoted admirer and imitator of Shakspere in thought, device, and expression.’