prices, the encloser of commons, the usurer, the worker of iron, the cheating tradesman, is clear from a passage in _The Guardian_.(52) The beautiful description in the same play of the amusements of country life, the hunting and the hawking, with which Durazzo seeks to console his love-sick ward Caldoro,(53) probably takes one back to Massinger’s own boyhood in Wiltshire. As we should expect, there is a good deal of riding in the country scenes.(54) The characters of Sir John Frugal, the successful merchant, and Mr. Plenty, the country gentleman,(55) show us that the “John Bull” type of Englishman existed in those days. The temptation to give a back-hand blow to one’s own country in the course of a plot laid abroad is obvious and irresistible; where Shakspere had set the example others were sure to follow,(56) and Massinger does not spare the female sex of England. To judge by the passage in _The Renegado_,(57) the women of his day loved expense and luxury, and were very independent in their attitude to their husbands.(58) The humiliation of Lady Frugal and her two daughters after their extravagant ambitions is the point of _The City Madam_. The contrast between a uxorious husband and an imperious wife is one of Massinger’s favourite effects.(59) Donusa’s speech in her own defence in _The Renegado_ might have been written by a suffragette of our own day.(60) We do not get much direct evidence as to the characteristics of the playwright’s audiences; Dr. Bradley has some good remarks on this subject.(61) “Nor is it credible that an appreciation of the best things was denied to the mob, which doubtless loved what we should despise; but appears also to have admired what we admire, and to have tolerated more poetry than most of us can stomach;” “the mass of the audience must have liked excitement, the open exhibition of violent and bloody deeds, and the intermixture of seriousness and mirth.” Dr. Bradley points out elsewhere(62) that the Elizabethan actor probably spoke more rapidly than our modern actors. This would make soliloquies less tedious. To turn to the politics of the age; the rift between the dynasty and the nation grew wider as the century advanced. Though Massinger died before the days of the Long Parliament, we can imagine that he would have been one of those who eventually fought under protest for the King. We find evidence in his plays for supposing that he belonged to the Conservative Opposition, like his patron Philip, the fourth Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. He was a lover of liberty, and there are one or two indications that his plays offended the strict ideas of Charles I.’s censorship.