Excerpt from A New Way to Pay Old Debts: A Play Written Characteristics. Comparatively little is known of he lives of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists - even the life of the greatest, Shakespeare, is wrapped in a shroud of mystery and 'possibility.' So with the life of Philip Massinger, the author of A New Way to Pay 01d Debts, one of the few early plays, apart from the Shakespearean dramas, that have held the stage since its earliest production, assigned to a year previous to 1633, when in quarto form it first reached the hands of the public. No apology is needed for the inclusion of Massinger's famous work in T be T emple Series of distinguished dramatists. It is a great play in every sense of the word - a play of which even Shakespeare would not have been ashamed, and certainly far superior to the quality of 'the seven contemptible dramas, ' as Mr. Sidney Lee styles them, ' in which Shakespeare had no hand that were published with his name or initials on the title -page while his fame was at its height.' About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.