In the wider world of Europe the Turk and the Algerine pirate are still grim realities enough to form an effective scenic background.(32) Indeed, it was not so very long since the Battle of Lepanto. We find constant references to galley-slaves,(33) to the slave market,(34) and to apostates to Islam.(35) In the opening scene of _The Picture_ the soldier husband parts from his wife on the frontier of Bohemia “not distant from the Turkish camp above five leagues.” One of the objections urged against the new custom of fighting duels is that thereby lives are lost which might have done service against the Turk.(36) The age of chivalry has its faint reflection in schemes to “redeem Christian slaves chain’d in the Turkish servitude” by force of arms, and in the prowess of the Knights of Malta.(37) The wealth and power of Turkey are taken for granted. When Malefort senior vows vengeance on Montreville, he cries out: The Turkish Empire offer’d for his ransom Should not redeem his life.(38) At home we find the vices of a prolonged peace lending opportunity for some easy satire. On the whole, we may say that we do not learn very much about our country from the poet which we could not find in the other playwrights of the day. Let us rapidly put together some of his references. There were two Englands at this time, drifting inevitably apart, only to clash in fratricidal war under Charles I. The drama was becoming less and less national, more and more an affair of aristocratic patronage. Massinger does not often refer to the Puritans;(39) there is nothing so amusing in his plays as the passage in Fletcher’s _Fair Maid of the Inn_, where the Pedant solicits the advice of Forobosco the quack about “erecting four new sects of religion at Amsterdam.”(40) The fashionable love of astrology is satirized in _The City Madam_. The England of Massinger’s plays is an England which loves expense,(41) amusements, Greek wines,(42) masques,(43) new clothes,(44) and foreign fashions.(45) London is a great port, with trade to the Indies and aspirations after the “North passage.” The jealousy of the City and the Court, the ostentations of the one and the refinement of the other, point the moral of _The City Madam_.(46) The high-spirited ’prentices of the City of London take the law into their own hands in days when there are no police,(47) and their vices are satirized after the manner of Ben Jonson in the same play. Horse-play, such as tossing in a blanket, is considered a great joke.(48) The balladmonger so often referred to in Shakspere is much in evidence,(49) though indeed it was an age in which everyone wrote poetry.(50) In rural England we find the possibility of an unscrupulous local tyrant, such as is depicted to us in Massinger’s masterpiece, Sir Giles Overreach, aided by his jackal, Mr. Justice Greedy.(51) That our poet had a keen eye for social evils, for the man who sells food at famine