As the leading dramatist of London's major theatrical company, the King's Men, during Charles I's reign, Philip Massinger had the distinction of holding a post which had been occupied by William Shakespeare until 1616 and then by John Fletcher until 1625. He was the author or part-author of well over fifty plays. Some of these are lost, known to us only by their titles. A most important part of his output, the twelve or more plays that he wrote in collaboration with John Fletcher, were published, without any acknowledgment of his participation, in the "Beaumont and Fletcher" folio of 1647.

In his own plays Massinger went on to exploit the vein of romantic tragicomedy that John Fletcher had successfully initiated early in the Jacobean period; but he wrote several tragedies, of which The Roman Actor was the best known. He also wrote two satirical social comedies, A New Way to Pay...