[Enter, below, PESCARA, MALATESTI, RODERIGO, and Bos. Revenge for the Duchess of Malfi murdered By the Arragonian brethren; for Antonio Slain by this hand; for lustful Julia Poison'd by this man; and lastly for myself, Much 'gainst mine own good nature, yet i' the end PES. CARD. How now, my lord! Look to my brother: [Dies.] He gave us these large wounds, as we were struggling Be laid by and never thought of. PES. How fatally, it seems, he did withstand His own rescue! MAL. Thou wretched thing of blood, How came Antonio by his death? Bos. In a mist; I know not how: Such a mistake as I have often seen In a play. O, I am gone! We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves, PES. The noble Delio, as I came to th' palace, [Dies.] [Enter DELIO, and ANTONIO's Son] MAL. O sir, you come too late! I heard so, and Was arm'd for 't, ere I came. Let us make noble use To establish this young hopeful gentleman In 's mother's right. These wretched eminent things As when she 's pleas'd to make them lords of truth: Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end. Exeunt. INTRODUCTORY NOTE PHILIP MASSINGER was born at Salisbury in 1584. Though the son of a Member of Parliament, he seems to have inherited no means, for the first notice we have of him after his leaving Oxford in 1606 is a petition addressed to Henslowe by him and two friends for a payment of five pounds on account, to get them out of prison. After Beaumont retired from play-writing, Massinger became Fletcher's chief partner, and there is evidence that there existed between them a warm friendship. All Massinger's relations with his fellow authors of which we have record seem to have been pleasant; and the impression of his personality which one derives from his work is that of a dignified, hard-working, and conscientious man. He seems to have been much interested in public affairs, and he at times came into collision with the authorities on account of the introduction into his plays of more or less veiled allusions to political personages and events. He died in 1640. The best known of Massinger's works is "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," which was probably acted for the first time in 1625. The popularity of the play is chiefly due to the principal character, Sir Giles Overreach, a usurer and extortioner, drawn, however, on such magnificent lines as to rise far above the conventional miser of literature. Overreach is presented with great dramatic skill, the situations being chosen and elaborated so as to throw his figure into high relief; and though his villainy reaches the pitch of monstrosity, the illusion of life is preserved. Here, as elsewhere, Massinger's sympathies are on the side of wholesome morals; and it was probably the powerful didactic tendency of the play and its fine rhetoric which, united with the impressiveness of the main figure, enabled it to hold the stage into the nineteenth century. A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS DRAMATIS PERSONÆ LORD LOVELL, an English Lord. SIR GILES OVERREACH, a cruel extortioner. [FRANK] WELLBORN, a Prodigal. [TOM] ALLWORTH, a young Gentleman, Page to Lord Lovell. GREEDY, a hungry Justice of Peace. MARRALL, a Term-Driver; a creature of Sir Giles Overreach. [Enter] WELLBORN [in tattered apparel,] TAPWELL and FROTH Wellborn N° BOUSE? nor no tobacco? TAP. Not a suck, sir; Nor the remainder of a single can Left by a drunken porter, all night pall'd3 too. FROTH. Not the dropping of the tap for your morning's draught, sir: 'Tis verity, I assure you. 1 Before Tapwell's house. Booze, drink, • Staled. |