Philip Massinger

Philip Massinger was the son of a servant of the Earl of Pembroke who wrote for the London stage for thirty years, in collaboration with Fletcher and then as the King’s Men’s chief dramatist after Fletcher’s death. A New Way to Pay Old Debts of 1625, in which the extortioner Sir Giles Overreach is cheated out of his gains and goes mad, was the one Jacobean comedy that never left the repertory, Overreach being a part that Kean and every later actor of villains wanted. He was found dead in bed in 1640 and buried in Fletcher’s grave.