A New Way to Pay Old Debts

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A New Way to Pay Old Debts (ca. 1625, printed 1633) was the most popular play by Philip Massinger. The play's anti-hero, Sir Giles Overreach, is based on the real-life Giles Mompesson. (Sir Giles' assistant in villainy, Justice Greedy, was suggested by Mompesson's associate Sir Francis Michell.)

Massinger most likely wrote the play in 1625, though its debut on stage was delayed a year as the theatres were closed due to bubonic plague. The play was first published in 1633 in quarto by stationer Henry Seyle (his shop was "in S. Pauls Church-yard, at the signe of the Tygers head"). The title page states that the play had been "often acted at the Phoenix in Drury Lane, by the Queens Maiesties seruants" — that is, by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre. It was continuously in the repertory there and at the Red Bull Theatre, under the managements of Christopher Beeston, William Beeston, and Sir William Davenant, down to the closing of the theatres at the start of the English Civil War in 1642.

The 1633 quarto carries a dedication of "this trifle" to Robert Dormer, 1st Earl of Carnarvon, Master Falconer of England (he'd succeeded to his hereditary title, Chief Avenor and Keeper of the King's Hawks and Falcons, at the age of six). In this dedication, Massinger states that he "born a devoted servant to the thrice noble family of your incomparable Lady," that lady being Anna Sophia Herbert, daughter of Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, then serving as Lord Chamberlain. Massinger's connection to the Herbert family, derived from his father, is well known; whether Carnarvon responded in any away positively to the dedication is obscure.

The play illustrates the hardening of class distinctions that characterized the early Stuart era, leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War. In Elizabethan plays like The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599), it was acceptable and even admirable that a young nobleman marry a commoner's daughter; other plays of the era, like Fair Em (ca. 1590) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (ca. 1597-9), share this liberal attitude toward social mobility through marriage. In A New Way to Pay Old Debts, in contrast, Lord Lovell would rather see his family line go extinct than marry Overreach's daughter Margaret, even though she's young, beautiful, and virtuous. In IV,i Lovell specifies that his attitude is not solely dependent on his loathing of the father's personal vices, but is rooted in class distinction. Lovell rejects the idea of his descendants being "one part scarlet" (aristocratic) and "the other London blue" (common).^[1]

Though Massinger's play shows obvious debts to Thomas Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One (ca. 1605), it transcends mere imitation to achieve a powerful dramatic effectiveness — verified by the fact that, apart from the Shakespearean canon, it was almost the only pre-Restoration play that was continuously in the dramatic repertory through much of the modern era. After David Garrick's 1748 revival, the play remained popular throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries. (It was praised by Thomas Jefferson.) Edmund Kean's version of Sir Giles, which debuted in 1816, was in particular a tremendous popular success, and drove the play's reputation through the remainder of the century.

The power of the role of Sir Giles may lie in Massinger's success in depicting a blatant villain who has a quality of everyday believability, unlike previous anti-heroes in English theatre. (Think of Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine or Doctor Faustus, with their "over-the-top" flamboyance; only Marlowe's genius prevents the protagonists from falling into the same class as the "ranting Herods" of the earlier, cruder drama.) Sir Giles is down-to-earth in his cold malice:

I'll therefore buy some cottage near his manor,

Which done, I'll make my men break ope his fences,

Ride o'er his standing corn, and in the night

Set fire on his barns, or break his cattle's legs.

These trespasses draw on suits, and suits expenses,

Which I can spare, but will soon beggar him. (Act II, scene i)

The audience is presented with a character they might meet personally in their own lives, to their own cost.

Modern editors of the play note 52 individual editions between 1748 and 1964 (not counting collections); others have followed since.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Gurr, Shakespearean Stage, pp. 15-16.

[edit] References

• Ball, Robert Hamilton. The Amazing Career of Sir Giles Overreach: being the life and adventures of a nefarious scoundrel who for three centuries pursued his sinister designs in almost all the theatres of the British Isles and America, the whole comprising a history of the stage. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1939.
• Gibson, Colin, ed. The Selected Plays of Philip Massinger. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978.
• Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642. Third edition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992.