SOURCE: Edwards, Philip. “Massinger's Men and Women.” In Philip Massinger: A Critical Reassessment, edited by Douglas Howard, pp. 39-49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

In the following essay, Edwards explores Massinger's depictions of conflicts between the sexes and argues that the playwright presents the relations between men and women with sensitivity and insight.

An extended session with Massinger's plays is likely to give a reader a frequent sense of déjà vu as similar images, protestations, situations and even characters come round again and again. But repetitiousness is not necessarily a sign of a lack of inventiveness, and Massinger's pronounced tendency to do things more than once often shows him absorbed in the ramifications of some particular issue or problem. His two satirical comedies, A New Way to Pay Old Debts and The City Madam, show general similarity in treating the war between the nobility and the city, but...