Appendix II
Did Massinger know Greek? It is perhaps worth while collecting the scanty evidence on the subject. We find a pun on the name Philanax in The Emperor of the East,510 and Mathias plays on the name of his wife Sophia.511 The phrase κατ᾽ ἐξοήν is used in The Guardian.512 We find a Greek construction in The Emperor of the East:513
And that before he gives he would consider
The what, to whom, and wherefore.
On the other hand, we notice Theseus scanned as a trisyllable.514
There are one or two passages where the unexpected turn of the thought rather suggests a Greek original. Thus, in The Renegado515 we are reminded of The Acharnians:516
Gazet.
What places of credit are there?
Carazie.
Chief gardener.
Gazet.
Out upon’t! ’Twill put me in mind my mother was an herb woman.
Another passage of The Renegado517 reminds us of a famous fragment of Euripides,518 often mistranslated:
Asambeg.
At Aleppo
I durst not press you so far: give me leave
To use my own will and command in Tunis.
In The Virgin Martyr519 we find a parallel to The Hecuba:520
Theophilus.
As a curious painter,
When he has made some honourable piece,
Stands off, and with a searching eye examines
Each colour, how ’tis sweeten’d; and then hugs
Himself for his rare workmanship.
In The Emperor of the East521 occurs a parallel quoted by Dr. Walter Headlam in his notes to Agamemnon:522
Theodosius.
What an earthquake I feel in me!
And on the sudden my whole fabric totters!
My blood within me turns, and through my veins,
Parting with natural redness, I discern it
Chang’d to a fatal yellow.
It is the general opinion of scholars that our Elizabethan dramatists owed very little to the Greek drama directly, but we cannot forget that Massinger had had a good education at Oxford, and was a widely read man.523 His forensic skill often reminds us of Euripides; and if he did not know the works of his illustrious predecessor, he would have found in them a congenial spirit.524
The speech of Sanazarro to Giovanni in The Great Duke of Florence525 reminds us of Creon’s arguments in Sophocles’ Œdipus Tyrannus, line 596 κ.τ.λ.
The scene in The Bondman,526 when the senators frighten the mutinous slaves by shaking their whips, reminds us of the Scythians in Herodotus,527 but it is also found in Justin,528 and Gifford points out that it may really have been borrowed from a contemporary book of travels, Purchas’s Pilgrims.529
Massinger had a good working knowledge of mythology; thus, references in his plays to Hercules and Alcides abound, as they do in Shakspere. We find several false quantities in proper names: Caesarĕa, in The Virgin Martyr; Archidămus, in The Bondman; Eubŭlus, in The Picture; Nomothētae, in The Old Law530; Cybēle, in Believe as You List.531 We may compare Shakspere’s Andronĭcus; Anthrŏpos in Four Plays in One, The Triumph of Time; and Euphānes in The Queen of Corinth.532
It seems scarcely worth while to collect the passages which show Massinger’s knowledge of Latin; the authors he seems to have known best are Ovid, Juvenal, and Horace. Swinburne and others have commented on his indulgence in “the commonplace tropes and flourishes of the schoolroom or the schools.”533