SOURCE: Hoy, Cyrus. “Verbal Formulae in the Plays of Philip Massinger.” Studies in Philology 56, No. 4 (October 1959): 600-18.

In the following essay, Hoy discusses the repeated verbal patterns in Massinger's own plays and his collaborative efforts.

Massinger's habit of repeating himself is well known. Scholars such as Boyle and Oliphant, investigating his share in the Beaumont and Fletcher plays, have adduced the tendency as evidence for determining his work in collaboration with other dramatists.¹ Critics such as T. S. Eliot, L. C. Knights, and M. C. Bradbrook see in the habit a symptom of the decadence that is generally regarded as the characteristic note of the later Jacobean drama.² The current attitude toward parallel passages as evidence for authorship being what it is, the interest that once attached to Massinger's repetitions as sources of authorial evidence is no longer the primary one; though when a dramatist repeats himself on...