Philip Massinger Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Ira Clark

Critical Essay by Ira Clark

SOURCE: Clark, Ira. “The Power of Integrity in Massinger's Women.” In The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon, edited by Anne M. Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky, pp. 63-79. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Clark argues that by emphasizing the value of female chastity, Massinger's plays “presented a reformation of gender roles that considerably increased women's power without rupturing tradition.”

Most critics have admitted the dominating power, or at least the willfulness, of women in the drama of Philip Massinger, premier professional playwright of the late Jacobean and Caroline theater.¹ But despite recognition of these women's superior wills and language, little note has been made of their exceptional personal integrity or of their extraordinary persuasiveness in public arenas. Nor has the significance of these women's powerful integrity and effective public speech been deemed potentially important for understanding a sociopolitical principle that Massinger consistently...
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